Prospects For Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in The New Century Professor P.aka

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTICLES
THE BLACK QUEST FOR ECONOMIC LIBERTY:
LEGAL, HISTORICAL, AND RELATED
CONSIDERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W. Sherman Rogers 1
FLAGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Bennett Capers 121
PROSPECTS FOR IGBO HUMAN RIGHTS IN

NIGERIA IN THE NEW CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philip C. Aka 165
IS UNITED STATES V. MORRISON ANTIDEMOCRATIC?:

POLITICAL SAFEGUARDS, DEFERENCE, AND
THE COUNTERMAJORITARIAN DIFFICULTY . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Keenan 267
TRAGICOMEDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yxta Maya Murray 309
FREEDOM NOW!RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

AND THE WORK OF DE-COLONIZATION
TODAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Hayakawa Torok 351
FOCUS ON BIODIVERSITY FOR FOOD SECURITY

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE
FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION
OF THE UNITED NATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Jacques Diouf 395
AGRICULTURAL BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY FOR

FOOD SECURITY: SHAPING INTERNATIONAL
INITIATIVES TO HELP AGRICULTURE
AND THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clive Stannard, 397
Niek van der Graaff,
Alan Randell,
Peter Lallas
& Peter Kenmore
EXPRESSING THE VALUE OF AGRODIVERSITY

AND ITS KNOW-HOW IN INTERNATIONAL SALES . . . Marsha A. Echols 431
BOOK REVIEW
JUDGING JUDGES JUDGING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen J. Fortunato, Jr. 459
NOTES & COMMENTS
THE UNITED STATES-PUERTO RICO
RELATIONSHIP: INCOMPLETE
DECOLONIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karina Camacho 491
COMPELLING JEKYLL TO DITCH HYDE:

HOW THE LAW OUGHT TO ADDRESS
BATTERER DUPLICITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erin Street Mateer 525
Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in
Nigeria in the New Century
PHILIP C. AKA*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
I. HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY REGARDING
THE GUARANTEE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN
NIGERIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
A. Defining Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
B. Guarantee of Human Rights in Nigeria . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
II. IGBOS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A. The Igbo People and Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
B. Igbos as a Subject of International Law and a
Legitimate Object of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
III. DOCUMENTING ABUSES OF IGBO HUMAN
RIGHTS IN NIGERIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
A. Before Independence: Atrocities Arising from the
Slave Trade and Colonial Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
1. The Slave Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
2. British Colonial Rule in Nigeria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
B. From Independence to 1970: Atrocities Arising from
Massacres and a Civil War Conducted in Willful
Breach of the Geneva Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
* Associate Professor of Political Science, Chicago State University; Vice Chair, Ameri-
can Bar Association Committee on International Human Rights; Member, Illinois Bar; Winner,
Lawrence Dunbar Reddick Memorial Scholarship Award for the Best Article on Africa Pub-
lished in the Journal of Third World Studies in 2001. J.D., Temple University School of Law;
Ph.D., Howard University; M.A., University of North Texas; B.A., Edinboro University of Penn-
sylvania. This Article originated as a paper presented at the International Conference on Igbo
Studies held at the Africana Studies and Research Center of Cornell University on April 4-5,
2003. The conference honored Professor Simon Ottenberg of the University of Washington,
Seattle, for his enduring contributions to Igbo studies. The author is indebted to Ken Nichols,
Erin Street, and their colleagues on the Howard Law Journal for their superb editorial work on
this Article.
2004 Vol. 48 No. 1
165
Howard Law Journal
1. The Massacres of 1966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

2. Conduct of the Biafran War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
a. Partition of the Nigerian Government and
Surveying the Scale of Igbo Destructiveness
in the Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
b. Assessing Allegations of Genocide
Regarding the Conduct of the War . . . . . . . . . 200
c. The Role of Major Powers in the Defeat of
Biafra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
d. Key Lessons the War Held for Nigeria . . . . . 205
C. The Post-Civil War Period to the Present: Negation
of the Post-War Reconstruction Program and
Violations Through Marginalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
1. Negation of the Post-War Reconstruction
Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
2. Nature and Indicators of Igbo Marginalization . 213
3. Evaluating the Argument of Igbo Self-
Marginalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
IV. ASSESSING GENERAL OBASANJOS
CONTRIBUTION TO VIOLATIONS OF IGBO
HUMAN RIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
V. REBUTTING THE CLAIM THAT IGBOS ARE NO
MORE VICTIMS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
ATROCITIES THAN OTHER NIGERIANS . . . . . . . . . . 221
VI. CORRECTING VIOLATIONS OF IGBO HUMAN
RIGHTS IN NIGERIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
A. Reparations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
B. Political Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
1. Federalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
2. Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
VII. CASE FOR SEPARATE STATEHOOD AS AN
APPROPRIATE STRUCTURE FOR EFFECTIVE
SAFEGUARDING OF IGBO HUMAN RIGHTS IN
THE NEW CENTURY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
A. Changing Notion of Self-Determination and the
Igbo Situation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
1. Statement of the Traditional Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . 238
2. Mounting Dissatisfaction with the Traditional
Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
166 [VOL. 48:165

Prospects for Igbo Human Rights
3. The Changing Doctrine as Governmental

Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
4. Beyond the Traditional Doctrine: Survey of
Professor An-Naims Proposal for Mediating
the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-
Determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
a. International Legal Right to Secession . . . . . 249
b. Importance of International Action in the
Protection of Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
5. The Changing Doctrine and Igbos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
B. Lack of Any Articulable Objections to Igbo
Separate Statehood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
1. Argument that the Igbo Nation as It Exists
Today is a Creature of British Colonialism (the
No Britain, no Igbo Argument) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
2. The Balkanization Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
3. The Concern That Separation Will Be Violent . . 258
4. Concern That an Igbo State Will Not Be
Protective of Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
INTRODUCTION
Igbo human rights in Nigeria became an issue of international

interest and concern following the horrific massacres of 19661 and the
civil war from 1967 to 1970.2 These successive tragedies led to the
deaths of millions of Igbos, incalculable psychological trauma for sur-
vivors of these human holocausts and their kindred, as well as large-
scale loss or destruction of Igbo property in northern Nigeria and
other parts of the country.3 Igbos4 are an ethnic group,5 or nation,6 in
1. See discussion infra Part III(B)(1).

3. See discussion infra Parts III(B)(1)-(2).
4. For more on the Igbos, see discussion infra Part II. Igbo is spelled variantly as Ibo,
Ebo, and Heebo, but among Igbos, the preferred usage is Igbo, see ELIZABETH ISICHEI, A
HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE xv (1976) [hereinafter ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE],
the particular usage this Article also adopts.
5. An ethnic group is a distinct group in society self-consciously united around shared
histories, traditions, beliefs, cultures, and values, which mobilizes its membership for common
political, economic, and social purposes. NAOMI CHAZAN ET AL., POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN
CONTEMPORARY AFRICA 108 (3d ed. 1999). The term is sometimes interchanged with the word
tribe, a word, however, that, because of its pejorative connotation, I refrain from using, unless
quoting the work and language of others.
2004] 167
Howard Law Journal
present-day Nigeria7 reputed for their egalitarianism,8 enthusiasm for

education,9 technical ingenuity,10 and commercial entrepreneurship,11
among other attributes. They were a major group in the defunct Re-
public of Biafra.12 Although no violation of Igbo human rights of sim-
ilar proportions and gruesomeness has taken place since 1970,
atrocities against Igbos in the country remain rife and persistent.13 Ni-
geria violates the human rights of all its inhabitants, but much more so
the human rights of Igbos.14
This Article documents violations of Igbo human rights in Nige-
ria,15 critically assesses the capacity of the Nigerian political system as
a structure for the effectual promotion of Igbo individual and collec-
tive human rights,16 and points to independent Igbo statehood as the
only tool for the effective safeguarding of Igbo human rights in the
new century.17
This Article consists of seven parts. Part I presents a definition of
human rights and history as to the evolution of these rights in Nigeria.
Part II introduces the reader to the Igbo people and nation and ad-
dresses the question of whether Igbos, as a non-state entity, can be the
subject of international law and, as in this Article, a legitimate object
of analysis. Part III documents, chronologically, violations of Igbo
human rights. Although the analysis goes back in time, the main focus
is on atrocities isolable to the Nigerian state, particularly abuses that
occurred since the countrys independence in 1960. Part IV assesses
the contributions of General Obasanjo, as a major player in Nigerian
politics, to violations of Igbo human rights. Part V responds to the
allegation that Igbos are no more victims of human rights violations
than other Nigerians. Part VI is an assessment of the capacity of the
Nigerian system as an appropriate structure, focusing on the three im-
6. A nation is a group of people, with or without territorial control, who share common
customs, origins, history, or language. See DANIEL S. PAPP, CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS: FRAMEWORKS FOR UNDERSTANDING 38 (6th ed. 2002).
7. See discussion infra note 86 and accompanying text.
8. See discussion infra notes 82-84 and accompanying text; see also infra note 71.
9. See discussion infra note 80 and accompanying text; see also infra notes 283-84 and
corresponding texts.
10. See discussion infra Part VII(B)(4), esp. infra note 561 and accompanying text.
12. See discussion infra notes 90-92 and accompanying texts; on the birth and demise of
Biafra, see discussion infra Part III(B)(2)(a).
13. See discussion infra Part III(C); see also discussion infra Part IV.
14. See discussion infra Part V.
15. See discussion infra Part III.
16. See discussion infra Parts VI(A)-(B).
17. See discussion infra Part VII.
168 [VOL. 48:165

portant elements of reparations, federalism, and democracy, for the

correction of Igbo human rights violations. Part VII lays out the case
for separate statehood as the only effective tool for safeguard of Igbo
human rights. The latter section, along with Part III, comprises the
centerpiece of the Article. Tailoring the purposes of the study, these
seven main parts between and among them embed several critical and
interconnected arguments: Due to the rife and relentless violations of
Igbo human rights in Nigeria, and due to the lack of an adequate
Nigerian structure for safeguarding these rights, Igbos need a separate
state to secure these inalienable liberties; no valid objection against
the creation of such a state exists.
I. HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY REGARDING THE

GUARANTEE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN NIGERIA
A. Defining Human Rights
Human rights are freedoms such as life, liberty, security, subsis-
tence, and other guarantees to which people as humans have rights.18
They are generally understood as entitlements or claims against the
society held equally by all persons simply because they are human
beings.19 Although human rights are usually taken to have a special
reference to the way governments treat their own citizens,20 life, lib-
18. See JACK DONNELLY, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS 1 (2d ed. 1998); see also SA-
MUEL EDWARD CORWIN & JACK W. PELTASON, CORWIN & PELTASONS UNDERSTANDING THE
CONSTITUTION 4 (7th ed. 1976) (describing human rights as the rights that distinguish men and
women from the other creatures who inhabit the earth, the rights that make for the humanness
of human beings).
19. See OBASI OKAFOR-OBASI, THE ENFORCEMENT OF STATE OBLIGATIONS TO RESPECT
AND ENSURE HUMAN RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 17 (2003).
20. DONNELLY, supra note 18, at 1; see MARK R. AMSTUTZ, INTERNATIONAL ETHICS: CON-
CEPTS, THEORIES, AND CASES IN GLOBAL POLITICS 71 (1999); see also OKAFOR-OBASI, supra
note 19, at 17 (depicting international law as some additional instruments that individuals and
other beneficiaries of human rights could use to gain access to the enjoyment of these rights
from the state); Jack Donnelly, Unfinished Business, 30 PS: POL. SCI. & POL. 530 (1998)
(Human rights . . . typically target the state of which one is a national.); Louis Henkin, The
Universal Declaration and the U.S. Constitution, 30 PS: POL. SCI. & POL. 513 (1998) (underscor-
ing the national character of international human rights, that the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights calls on states to recognize the rights of their inhabitants under their national
laws, and to take measures to realize human rights through national institutions within their own
societies.). Conceptually speaking, human rights is simply the form in which the international
community, under Western influence, has chosen to express human dignity . . . . Virginia A.
Leary, The Effect of Western Perspectives on International Human Rights, in HUMAN RIGHTS IN
AFRICA: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 15, 29-30 (Abdullahi A. An-Naim & Francis M.
Deng eds., 1990). Although a concept with a Western origin, human rights is also so evolution-
ary and dynamic that today it is recognized and accepted throughout the world as a universal
term. Id. Human rights, as understood and practiced today under the United Nations system, is
distinguished from the idea of human rights (or freedom), which is something common to every
2004] 169
Howard Law Journal
erty, security, property and other humans rights may be denied by an

extensive array of individuals or organizations.21 Protecting human
rights today is a necessary and important part of what governments
do;22 human rights serve as a yardstick for measuring the true stan-
dard of a society and its level of development.23 Both safeguarding
minority rights and affording all citizens the opportunity to partici-
pate in the national life in a climate of justice and peace have be-
come, in our time, the mark of a morally adult society.24 Although
scholars such as Professor Henkin of Columbia University stress the
national character of human rights,25 the international community led
by the United Nationsas well as international actionplays a criti-
cal role in the safeguarding of human rights. Protecting human rights
is a matter of joint, global responsibility that cannot be left exclu-
sively to national governments.26 Not only are governments . . . an-
swerable internationally within their borders for their citizens
enjoyment of internationally defined human rights regimes, but to-
day, major states and international organizations are bracing them-
selves to become active partners of governments in making basic
civilization. See Philip C. Aka, The Military, Globalization, and Human Rights in Africa, 18
N.Y.L. SCH. J. HUM. RTS. 361, 375-76 (2002) [hereinafter Aka, Military, Globalization, and
Human Rights].
21. DONNELLY, supra note 18, at 1; see also ANDREW CLAPHAM, HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE
PRIVATE SPHERE (1993); Steven R. Ratner, Corporations and Human Rights: A Theory of Legal
Responsibility, 111 YALE L.J. 443 (2001); Paul Redmond, Transnational Enterprise and Human
Rights: Options for Standard Setting and Compliance, 37 INTL L. 69 (2003); Mary Robinson, The
Business Case for Human Rights, http//:www.unhchr.ch/ (last visited Sept. 1, 2004).
22. See LARRY DIAMOND, DEVELOPING DEMOCRACY: TOWARD CONSOLIDATION 4 (1999)
(citing the Declaration and Program of Action adopted by participants at the conclusion of the
Second World Conference of Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, which states that govern-
ments have a first responsibility for promoting and protecting human rights); Declaration on
the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect
Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, G.A. Res. 53/144, U.N.
GAOR 53d Sess., U.N. Doc. A/RES/53/144 (1999) (assigning governments responsibility for cre-
ating all necessary conditions for the effective enjoyment of every human right guaranteed for
their citizenry).
23. 2 U. OJI UMOZURIKE, THE AFRICAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS 5, 7
(1997); see also id. at 23 (indicating that no genuine development takes place at the expense of
human rights).
24. Emilio J. Cardenas & Mara Fernanda Canas, The Limits of Self-Determination, in THE
SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES: COMMUNITY, NATION, AND STATE IN AN INTERDEPENDENT
WORLD 101, 101 (Wolfgang Danspeckgruber ed., 2002) (quoting Pope John Paul II) [hereinafter
SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES].
25. See Henkin, supra note 20, at 513.
26. Paul Redmond, supra note 21, at 70; see also OKAFOR-OBASI, supra note 19, at 70-129,
who proposes several techniques the international community could use to facilitate enforce-
ment of state obligations to safeguard human rights.
170 [VOL. 48:165

human rights part of the working foundations of contemporary

states.27
Three isolable categories of human rights are (1) political-civil
rights; (2) social, economic, and cultural (or socioeconomic) rights,
and; (3) solidarity (or group), rights. Political-civil rights are rights
with which governments must not interfere.28 These rights include the
right to life, dignity, personal liberty, due process, private and family
life, freedom from discrimination; also important are the rights to
freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression
and the press, peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of
movement.29
Socioeconomic rights are rights that require the government to
do something, such as provide resources, without which the enjoyment
or realization of these rights is made difficult or impossible.30 These
rights include the right to education, right to work and to social secur-
ity, right to form and join trade unions, and right to health, among
others.31
Solidarity or group rights are rights that the individual may enjoy
as a member of a collective entity.32 These rights include the equality
of peoples, the right to self-determination, the right to free disposal of
natural wealth and resources, the right to development, the right to
international peace and security, and the right to a clean environ-
ment.33 A global human rights instrument that codifies political-civil
27. John W. Harbeson & Donald Rothchild, The African State and State System in Flux, in
AFRICA IN WORLD POLITICS: THE AFRICAN STATE SYSTEM IN FLUX 11 (John W. Harbeson &
Donald Rothchild eds., 3d ed. 2000) [hereinafter AFRICA IN WORLD POLITICS]. For more on the
necessity for international actionand the role of the international communityin safeguarding
human rights, see discussion infra Part VII(A)(4)(ii).
28. UMOZURIKE, supra note 23, at 29.
29. See, e.g., NIG. CONST. ch. IV, 33-41.
31. See id. at 45-49.
32. See CHRIS MAINA PETER, HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE
AFRICAN HUMAN AND PEOPLES RIGHTS CHARTER AND THE NEW TANZANIAN BILL OF RIGHTS
53, 58 (1990).
33. Id. at 59-69. The right to self-determination plays a central role among collective rights
and is so closely interconnected with some of these rights, such as the right to development, that
sometimes it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. The right to self-determination
has two mostly separate lives in international law, involving two set of claims. The first is
uncontested as a human right, while the second, still contested, derives from collective
processes demanding secession, autonomy, self-rule, self-administration, and the like. See
Richard Falk, Self-Determination Under International Law: The Coherence of Doctrine Versus the
Incoherence of Experience, in SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES, supra note 24, at 31, 66. The
concept is used here in the first sense, in the second sense in Part VII, and in a mixed sense in
some sections of the Article, such as Part II(B).
2004] 171
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rights is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

(ICCPR),34 while the one that codifies socioeconomic rights is the In-
ternational Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
(ICESCR).35 An international human rights instrument noted for its
emphasis on solidarity rights while also guaranteeing the other two
categories of rights is the African Charter on Human and Peoples
Rights (ACHPR).36 The three categories of rights are denominated,
respectively, first-generation, second-generation, and third-generation
rights. Each of the generations complements and completes the
others. Ranking them by generation does not imply that any category
of rights is superior to or takes precedence over the others.37 The
United Nations (UN) has stated that all human rights and fundamen-
tal freedoms are indivisible and interdependent and that equal atten-
tion and urgent consideration should be given to the implementation,
promotion, and protection of every category of human rights.38
As already implied in the foregoing three-category discussion,
human rights may also be classified based on whether they are held by
individuals or by groups. Political-civil and socioeconomic rights are
individual rights that may also be enjoyed by groups, while collective
rights such as the rights to peace, development, a clean environment,
and the right to self-determination, are collective rights that individu-
als may also enjoy. The UN recognizes the equality of opportunity for
development as a right that belongs to both individuals and nations.39
34. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), U.N.
GAOR, Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), available at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/
instree/b3ccpr.htm (last visited Sept. 16, 2004).
35. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, G.A. Res. 2200, U.N.
GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 49-52, U.N. Doc. A16316. 993 U.N.T.S. 3, 6 I.L.M. 360
(1966), available at http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr.htm (last visited Sept. 16, 2004).
The ICCPR and ICESCR had been envisioned in 1948 as a single treaty, denoted as the Interna-
tional Human Rights Covenants, but was broken into two because of the Cold War. DONNELLY,
supra note 18, at 8; RHODA E. HOWARD, HUMAN RIGHTS IN COMMONWEALTH AFRICA 2 (1986);
Leary, supra note 20, at 25-26. These two documents, together with the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, see discussion infra note 49 and corresponding text, are known collectively as the
International Bill of Rights.
36. African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, June 27, 1981, 21 I.L.M. 58 (entered
into force Oct. 21, 1986), available at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/z1afchar.htm (last
visited Sept. 16, 2004). For an analysis of this instrument, see, for example, A.H. ROBERTSON &
J.G. MERRILLS, HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE WORLD: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE
INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 242-66 (4th ed. 1996).
37. Aka, Military, Globalization, and Human Rights, supra note 20, at 375 (The various
generations of human rights highlight the evolution and mutual interdependence of these rights
rather than suggest that any category should have priority over the others.).
38. UMOZURIKE, supra note 23, at 42 (quoting U.N. Gen. Assembly Res. 32/130).
39. See id. at 60.
172 [VOL. 48:165

Also, international human rights instruments, such as the ACHPR,

recognize both individual and group rights.
Because of ambiguities regarding their scope, some international
law scholars and UN governmental delegates do not perceive group or
collective rights as real human rights.40 These rights do qualify as
such, however.41 Instruments or documents relating to international
human rights, such as the ICCPR, ICESCR, ACHPR, the UN Char-
ter, and the Declaration of Principles of International Law Concern-
ing Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States in Accordance
with the Charter of the United Nations,42 all recognize the right to
self-determination, a solidarity right, as a human right belonging to
and held by peoples.43 Collective rights have special importance
and value for individual rights.
Professor Falk calls the right to self-determination the underpin-
ning for all individual claimants seeking the legal protection of human
rights . . . .44 More generally, collective rights are an essential
framework for realizing most human rights of the individuals; individ-
uals are the direct beneficiaries of collective rights, and further, can-
not exercise most of their traditional human rights except as members
of a collectivity.45 As Professor An-Naim persuasively illustrates
with discrimination based on race, religion, or language, (usually ex-
40. See, e.g., JACK DONNELLY, UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 143-
54 (1989); see also Jack Donnelly, The Right to Development: How Not to Link Human Rights
and Development, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 261-83 (Claude E. Welch,
Jr. & Ronald I. Meltzer eds., 1984). Others such as Philip Alston see collective rights as norms
capable of becoming human rights provided abuse of such designation can be avoided. See
Philip Alston, A Third Generation of Solidarity Rights: Progressive Development or Obfuscation
of International Human Rights?, 29 NETH. INTL L. REV. 307, 307-22 (1982).
41. See, e.g., Yoram Dinstein, Collective Human Rights of Peoples and Minorities, 25 INTL
& COMP. L.Q. 102-20 (1976); see also Theo van Boven, The Relations Between Peoples Rights
and Human Rights in the African Charter, 7 HUM. RTS. L.J. 183, 183-94, 191-92 (1986), whose
contribution this Article discusses below.
42. Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-
operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, G.A. Res. 2625,
U.N. GAOR, 25th Sess., Supp. No. 28, at 121, U.N. Doc. A/8028 (1971) [hereinafter Declaration
of Principles]
43. See ICCPR, supra note 34, art. 1.1, 1.2; ICESCR, supra note 35, art. 1.1, 1.2; ACHPR,
supra note 36, art. 20.1; see also ACHPR, supra note 36, arts. 2.1 and 2.2 (dealing with the right
to development); U.N. Charter, arts. 1.2 and 55; Declaration of Principles, princ. (e), para. 7. The
reference in the ACHPR, art. 2.2, to the right to development shows how closely related the
right to self-determination is to the right to development and reinforces our argument, supra
notes 34-5 and corresponding texts, as to the interconnectedness, if not inseparableness, of the
various generations of human rights.
44. Falk, supra note 33, at 32.
45. Abdullahi An-Naim, The National Question, Secession and Constitutionalism: The Me-
diation of Competing Claims to Self-Determination, in CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY:
TRANSITION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD 111 (Douglas Greenberg et al. eds., 1993).
2004] 173
Howard Law Journal
perienced by individual persons) the individual quality of many indi-

vidual rights derives its significance from its implications to the
collectivity.46 These occurrences speak to the interconnectedness of
various categories and classes of rights and the undesirability, if not
futility, of any rigid distinction among these categories or classes.
Again, as the UN counsels, all human rights and fundamental free-
doms are indivisible and interdependent.47
Two objections raised to the recognition of collective rights as
human rights are that: (1) they are not legally enforceable; and (2)
there is no certainty as to the entity against which such rights are to be
asserted or claimed. But each of these objections is disposable.48 Re-
garding enforceability, leading human rights instruments, such as the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),49 and the ACHPR,
are, as Boven reminds us, more than legal instruments. They are also
instruments of liberation. . . . The struggles for human rights and peo-
ples rights are not only settled in the courts but also and perhaps
more decisively in political fora.50 This is a view shared by Professor
An-Naim, who maintains, it is desirable to think of collective rights,
such as the right to self-determination as a human right because of the
power of the idea of human rights and its utility in political dis-
course.51 And, says An-Naim, collective rights can be formulated
and implemented in a meaningful way, so long as: [i]n doing so,
valid differences between individual and collective human rights must
be recognized; it is particularly important to identify the claimant of
the collective right, the entity against whom the right is held and the
means of satisfying the right in any given case.52 He advises that
46. Id. at 117.

47. UMOZURIKE, supra note 23, at 42 (quoting U.N. Gen. Assembly Res. 32/130).
48. The quibble over whether collective rights can be real rights cannot but call to mind the
rebuke the African American literary giant, Richard Wright (1908-60), delivered to U.S. con-
servatives whom Wright said seek to smother the Negro problem as a whole when they insist
upon regarding Negroes as individuals and making individuals deals with individual Negroes,
ignoring the inevitable race consciousness which three hundred years of Jim Crow living has
burned into the collective heart of American Blacks. Richard Wright, Introduction, in ST.
CLAIR DRAKE & HORACE R. CAYTON, BLACK METROPOLIS: A STUDY OF NEGRO LIFE IN A
NORTHERN CITY xxix (1993).
49. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 A (III), U.N. GAOR, 3d Sess.,
U.N. Doc. A/810 (1948).
50. van Boven, supra note 41, at 191-92.
51. An-Naim, supra note 45, at 111.
52. Id.; see also generally OKAFOR-OBASI, supra note 19. This monograph is unique for its
attention to the gap in the literature, until now unfilled, of how to ensure enforcement of state
obligations in human rights. Dr. Okafor-Obasi articulates and discusses various measures for
ensuring that governments live up to their human rights obligations, including coercive and non-
coercive techniques as well as international tribunals. Id. at 70-129.
174 [VOL. 48:165

rights in human rights be read in a broader sense than mere legal

rights enforceable in a court of law.53 In regards to the second objec-
tion, no difficulty exists in ascertaining the entity against which these
rights can be asserted, because all rights are activated and asserted
against the source of challenge, denial, or threat, be that source the
nation-state of the same people, another people within that state, or
any other state.54
B. Guarantee of Human Rights in Nigeria

The guarantee of human rights in Nigeria has its genesis in the
attempt to allay the fears of minority ethnic groups55 who expressed
concern that majority groups in their regions would dominate them
after Nigeria became independent from Britain. As a result, the Brit-
ish government, in 1956, appointed the minorities commission other-
wise known as the Willink Commissionafter Sir Henry Willink, who
headed the panelto look into these fears and recommend means for
allaying them.56 The Commission recommended the entrenchment of
fundamental rights in the countrys constitution to allay those fears.57
The result was the insertion of fundamental guarantees in the coun-
trys independence and post-independence constitutions.
However, Nigeria has no culture of effective implementation of
the basic rights it inserts in its Constitutions and no tradition of re-
spect for individual and collective human rights. An important rela-
tionship exists between the safeguarding of human rights and
constitutionalism; a strong and legitimate constitutional order is nec-
essary not only to articulate but also to ensure the effective implemen-
tation of human rights protections.58 Nigeria does not have such a
53. See An-Naim, supra note 45, at 112-13.

54. See id. at 113.
55. Ekwueme Okoli, Toward a Human Rights Framework in Nigeria, in TOWARD A HUMAN
RIGHTS FRAMEWORK 203-04 (Peter Schwab & Adamantia Pollis eds., 1982).
56. REPORT OF THE COMMISSION APPOINTED TO INQUIRE INTO THE FEARS OF THE MINORI-
TIES AND THE MEANS OF ALLAYING THEM (1958).
57. Id.
58. See Philip C. Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999: Understanding the Paradox of Civil Rule and
Human Rights Violations Under President Olusegun Obasanjo, 4 SAN DIEGO INTL L.J. 209, 265-
69 (2003) [hereinafter Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999]; see also An-Naim, supra note 45, at 120
(defining a legitimate constitutional order as one that provides for and effectuates a decentral-
ized system of government that allows the various peoples the maximum degree of autonomy
compatible with territorial integrity; articulates, verbally and institutionally, collective and in-
dividual rights; and ensures the effective implementation of these rights). Professor An-Naim
identifies legitimate claims to be protected under a countrys legal order to include personal
liberty as well as economic, political, and social justice for all segments of the population. Id. at
122. He argues that violation of constitutional guarantees for basic rights can form the basis for
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Howard Law Journal
legitimate constitutional system. In particular, the country violates

the human rights of Igbos the most.59 Nigeria derives most of its infa-
mous reputation as a nation that disrespects human rights from its
habit of abuses of Igbo human rights. As this Article will show, both
Nigerian governments and ethnic groups alike have violated Igbo
human rights with impunity.
Two major recent events in the history of human rights in Nigeria
are the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission
(NHRC) in 1995, and the 1999 inauguration of the Human Right Vio-
lations Investigation Commission, otherwise known as the Oputa
Panel, after Chukwudifu Oputa, a retired Nigerian Supreme Court
Justice, who chaired the seven-person commission.60 The NHRC is
empowered to deal with all matters relating to human rights protec-
tion under the Nigerian Constitution, the ACHPR, and the UDHR.61
The Oputa Panel was charged with the responsibility of investigating
human rights abuses in the country from January 1966 to 1999.62 Spe-
cifically, its mandate was to ascertain the nature and causes of these
abuses, with particular reference to mysterious deaths and assassina-
tions or attempted assassinations, to identify persons or organizations
who perpetrated those abuses, to determine whether the violations
were a product of state policy, and to recommend measures designed
to redress these past injustices and prevent or forestall future viola-
tions.63 Five whole years later, however, the result of this investiga-
separate existence by a group denied those rights in order to promote the denied rights. See id.
at 106. The An-Naim piece was itself a contribution to constitutionalism that utilized the princi-
ple of self-determination as a theoretical framework. Id. at 121.
59. See discussion infra Part V.
60. See Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 218 n.57 for the identity of the other
six members of the Commission.
61. Id. at 217-18.
62. Id. at 218-19.
63. Id. at 218. The enabling law establishing the panel did not give it the power and author-
ity to compel witnesses. As a result, three former military rulers of the country, namely, Gener-
als Muhammadu Buhari (1983-1985), Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), and Abdulsalami
Abubakar (1998-1999), were subpoenaed to appear before the commission and refused to do so.
See Shola Oshunkeye, No Hiding Place for the Generals, TELL (Lagos), Aug. 27, 2001, at 31-35
(including a description of the abuses for which the generals were subpoenaed). The only for-
mer military ruler of the country to appear before the commission was General Obasanjo. Gen-
eral Yakubu Gowon, Head of State from 1966 to 1975, was not even invited to appear. There
are also problems arising from the duration covered by the panel. Although that duration is
broad, the focus on mysterious deaths and assassinations or attempted assassinations made the
panels mandate rather limiting. As this Article shows, human rights violations in Nigeria for the
period in question encompass large-scale deprivations of life, liberty, and property. However,
the mandate covers only life and leaves out liberty and property. Also, even the spectrum of life
covered is narrow, limited as it is to mysterious deaths and assassinations or attempted assassina-
tions. Life here, for example, does not include the massacres of Igbos in 1966, or the millions
176 [VOL. 48:165

tion has yet to be released by the government. In short, neither the

setting up of the Panel nor the inauguration of the NHRC has had a
positively observable effect on Igbo human rights.
II. IGBOS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

A. The Igbo People and Nation
The term Igbo designates both a language within the kwa
group of the Niger Congo family of languages, and indigenes in parts
of present-day Nigeria who speak the language. Igbos had a history of
independent existence that dates back thousands of years64 before
British intervention into what later became Nigeria. Pre-colonial Igbo
societies were acephalous or kingless communities,65 marked by de-
centralized political powers.66 Ancient Igbos organized themselves
into village democracies, over 2,000 in all,67 where they practiced a
direct democracy characterized by a system of checks and balances,
the pursuit of consensus through protracted discussion, the use of re-
ligious sanctions,68 and political institutions designed to combine
popular participation with weighting for experience,69 among other
features.70 Although elders ran affairs in Igbo societies,71 there was
who died during the civil war, many due to the conduct of the war by Nigerian authorities in
willful breach of the Geneva Convention, which stipulates provisions for the humane conduct
of war.
64. See ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 3 ([M]en have been living
in Igboland for at least [5,000] years. One of the most notable facts of Igbo history is its length
and continuity.).
65. ELIZABETH ISICHEI, THE IBO PEOPLE AND THE EUROPEANS: THE GENESIS OF A RELA-
TIONSHIP TO 1906, at 47 (1973) [hereinafter ISICHEI, GENESIS OF A RELATIONSHIP]. The termi-
nology used to celebrate this characteristic is Igbo enwe eze, meaning that Igbos have no King.
See generally RICHARD N. HENDERSON, THE KING IN EVERY MAN: EVOLUTIONARY TRENDS IN
ONITSHA IBO SOCIETY AND CULTURE (1972).
66. ROLF H.W. THEEN & FRANK L. WILSON, COMPARATIVE POLITICS: AN INTRODUCTION
TO SEVEN COUNTRIES 477 (3d ed. 1995).
67. See ELIZABETH ISICHEI, A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA: FROM ANTIQUITY TO
THE PRESENT 155 (1995); see also Simon Ottenberg, Ibo Receptivity to Change, in CONTINUITY
AND CHANGE IN AFRICAN CULTURES 130, 130 (William R. Bascom & Melville J. Herskovits
eds., 1959).
68. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 142-43.
69. Id. at 21.
70. Id. As Professor Isichei observes, One of the things that struck the first Western visi-
tors to Igboland, was the extent to which democracy was truly practiced. Id. Commenting on
Igbo democracy, based on her reading of Professor Achebes celebrated novel Things Fall Apart,
one observer stated:
What is remarkable about [the] Igbos is the degree to which they have achieved the
foundations of what most people seek todaydemocratic institutions, tolerance of
other cultures, a balance between male and female principles, capacity to change for
the better or to meet new circumstances, a means of redistributing wealth, support for
industriousness, a viable system of morality, . . . an effective system of justice . . . .
2004] 177
Howard Law Journal
also much scope for individual mobility,72 and political participation

was open to many, including women.73 Current pan-Igbo identity and
the use of the Igbo ethnic label are externally imposed, recent phe-
nomena that arose from British colonial rule.74 Before colonial rule
and the politicization of ethnic identity that followed foreign rule,
Igbos thought of and identified themselves only based on villages they
came from: as people from Abakaliki, Asaba, Awka, Enugu, Owerri,
Umuahia, and so forth.75 Although the massacres of 1966 and the war
for Biafra from 1967 to 1970 thrust Igbos into global consciousness,
before 1966 Igbos had already emerged as a major ethnic group in
Nigeria and Africa as a whole.76
Igbo adaptability is one important feature that marks the ethnic
group apart from their counterparts in Africa.77 Beginning with an
economic system built on metallurgy and agriculture during the pre-
colonial period,78 Igbos embraced Western education and commerce
following British entry into Nigeria.79 Their commitment in these
fields expanded over time such that before the civil war, Eastern Nige-
ria, the region where Igbos had their home, was investing over forty
percent of its budget in education.80 And in commercial entrepre-
Achebe appears to have tested Igbo culture against the goals of modern liberal democ-
racy and to have set out to show how the Igbo meet those standards.
Diana A. Rhoads, Culture in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart, 36 AFR. STUD. REV. 61 (1993).
71. See ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 22. Elaborating on the role
elders played in Igbo politics, based again on a reading of Achebes work, Rhoads stated:
For great decisions, the ndichie, or elders, gather together all of Umuofia. . . . The clan
rules all, and the collective will of the clan can be established only by the group. Fur-
ther, as is appropriate for and in a democracy, each man is judged on his own merits,
according to his worth, not those of his father, as would be the case in an aristocracy or
oligarchy.
Rhoads, supra note 70, at 63 (internal quotes omitted).
73. THEEN & WILSON, supra note 66, at 477-78. Dr. Azikiwe, first President of Nigeria, an
Igbo, once praised Eastern Nigeria as the arsenal of republicanism in Nigeria. See NNAMDI
AZIKIWE, ZIK: A SELECTION FROM THE SPEECHES OF NNAMDI AZIKIWE 20 (1961).
74. CHAZAN ET AL., supra note 5, at 109; ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra
note 4, at 20; Government of the Republic of Biafra, Introducing the Republic of Biafra, availa-
ble at http://www.westafricareview.com/war/vol2.2/biafra/republic.htm at 5 (1967) [hereinafter
Introducing Biafra];.
75. Introducing Biafra, supra note 74, at 3.
76. For a list of the main ethnic groups in Africa, see, for example, RICHARD A. FREDLAND,
UNDERSTANDING AFRICA: A POLITICAL ECONOMY PERSPECTIVE 101-04 (2001).
77. See Ottenberg, supra note 67, at 130-43; see also Stanley Diamond, Who Killed Biafra?,
14 N.Y. REV. BOOKS 4 (Feb. 26, 1970) (quoting Margery Perham & K. Onwuka Dike) (on file
with author).
78. See ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 7-14.
79. See id. at 185-225.
80. See id. at 185; see also Nigerias Civil War: Hate, Hunger and the Will to Survive, TIME,
Aug. 23, 1968, at 20 [hereinafter Nigerias Civil War] Before their secession from Nigeria, the
178 [VOL. 48:165

neurship such was the gain made that, in Professor Isicheis elegant
phraseology, Igbos changed the very name Ohafia (a town in Igbo-
land) in the last century from oha-ofia, people living in the bush, to
oha-afia, people who trade.81 This adaptability is due to Igbo culture
being based on achievement, which assesses the work of individuals,
big or small, based on whether they tried or did their best, rather
than on inheritance.82 Professor Achebe attributes the rise of Igbos in
Nigerian affairs to a self-confidence engendered by their open soci-
ety and their belief that one man is as good as another, that no condi-
tion is permanent.83 Plus the Igbo has an advantage that his rivals
lack.
Unlike the Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion and
unlike the Yoruba unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind
of creature, fearing [neither] God nor man, was custom-made to
grasp the opportunities, such as they were, of the [W]hite mans dis-
pensation. And the Igbo did so with both hands. Although the Yo-
ruba had a huge historical and geographical head-start the Igbo
wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy in the
twenty years between 1930 and 1950.84
Unfortunately, this kind of success can come with its price, which,
for the Igbo, was a noisy exhibitionism and disregard for humility
and quietness.85
Igbos were consolidated with many other groups by Britain to
create Nigeria in 1914.86 They are one of the three largest ethnic
Ibos of the Eastern Region were spending [forty percent] of their public funds on education.
Villagers often pooled their resources to send the most promising boy of college age off to study
in Britain . . . . Id. at 21.
81. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 212.
82. See Diamond, supra note 77; see also supra notes 71-72 and corresponding text; supra
notes 83-84 and corresponding text.
83. CHINUA ACHEBE, THE TROUBLE WITH NIGERIA 47 (1983).
84. Id. at 46. For more on Hausa-Fulanis and Yorubas, see discussion infra note 87.
85. ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 46.
86. The country was named after the River Niger, which cuts through much of the land. The
British citizen who coined that name was Lady Lugard, former girlfriend and later wife of the
first governor-general of the country, Lord Frederick D. Lugard. Some other accounts credit the
invention of the name Nigeria to an African correspondent of the Times of London. See
THEEN & WILSON, supra note 66, at 490. Professors Theen and Wilson noted, lamenting the
irrationality of colonial-era world politics, that the British government incorporated . . . the
impoverished and remote northern region primarily to prevent the French from adding it to their
African holdings. Id. The consolidation of the North and South, until 1914, held by Britain as
two separate protectorates ran against the advice of a committee the British colonial authori-
ties set up in 1899 which recommended a partition of the two, as well as against Lord Lugards
own belief in the oil-and-water incompatibility of the two. 1 A.H.M. KIRK-GREENE, CRISIS
AND CONFLICT IN NIGERIA: A DOCUMENTARY SOURCEBOOK 7 (1971) [hereinafter KIRK-
GREENE 1].
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groups in the country.87 Igbos number at least 30 million people and

make up about one-quarter of Nigerias population.88 While the Igbo
ancestral home, Igboland, is easily identified or demarcated, political
organization of that territory has changed over time in Nigeria. From
1954 to 1967, Igbos combined with other ethnic groups to form the
Eastern Region or Eastern Nigeria. A smaller but important section
of the ethnic group across the Niger River belonged in what was then
the Mid-Western Region or Mid-Western Nigeria. From the end of
the civil war in 1970 to 1976, Igbos constituted the East Central State,
an administrative unit unilaterally created and imposed by the Niger-
ian government in 196789 that became fully functional only with the
end of the war in 1970. As earlier indicated, Igbos were one of the
groups that comprised the Republic of Biafra.90 They made up almost
87. The other two groups are Hausa-Fulanis and Yorubas. Hausa-Fulanis are actually two
groups which, through religious conquest (by the Fulanis) and intermarriage over a long period
of time, have become seemingly one group and are all, but for the hyphenation, viewed and
treated as a single group. Yorubas are an ethnic group in the Southwest of Nigeria who, accord-
ing to legend, trace their common ancestry to a founder known as Oduduwa. Among them these
ethnic triumvirate make up approximately two-thirds of Nigerias population of over 120 million
people. Nigeria is believed to embody over 200 ethnic groups. But many of these groups are
extremely small, some of them numbering only in the tens of thousands. Not a few of these
groups appear to be simply invisible. Studies on the country are able to identify only a handful
of groups. See, e.g., EGHOSA E. OSAGHAE, CRIPPLED GIANT: NIGERIA SINCE INDEPENDENCE
xxi (1998), who points to less than sixty locations of major ethnic groups in the country. Igbos
are mostly Christian, unlike Hausa-Fulanis, who are mostly Muslim, and Yorubas, who are di-
vided, about equally, between the Christian and Muslim faiths. Each of the three main groups
has a distinct region of the country that forms its base. For Hausa-Fulanis, that geographical
base is the North; for Yorubas, it is the West; while for Igbos, it is the East. The entire country is
divided into six so-called geopolitical zones, three in the North and three in the South. Igbos
make up two of the countrys six geopolitical zones, namely, the all-Igbo South-East zone, con-
sisting of the majority Igbo states; and the South-South zone, made up of the two Igbo minority
states, and other non-Igbo ethnic groups. The four other zones are the South-West made up of
Yorubas, the North-East and North-West comprising Hausa-Fulanis, and North-Central made
up of various minority ethnic groups in northern Nigeria. Although the six zones have been
suggested as possible replacements for the states as federating units in Nigerias nominal federal
republic, since their creation in the days of General Abacha (1993-98), the zones have not been
the locus of any power other than a more manageable device for regrouping the countrys thirty-
six states. The reinforcing, as opposed to cross-cutting, nature of social cleavages in Nigeria,
coupled with the fact that class-consciousness is still poorly developed in the country, increases
the chances for ethnic conflict. To use Igbos as an example, ethnicity (Igboness) is magnified by
region (the East), religion (Christianity) and most recently, zone (South-East). Nigeria belongs
among countries that Donald Horowitz calls centralized ethnic systems. See generally DON-
ALD L. HOROWITZ, ETHNIC GROUPS IN CONFLICT (1985). In these systems, a few groups are so
large that their interactions are a constant theme of politics at the center. Id. at 39. The coun-
trys ethnic structure impedes rather than encourages inter-ethnic cooperation on the poorly
developed nature of social class in the country. See, e.g., THEEN & WILSON, supra note 66, at
491-93.
88. See JOE IGBOKWE, IGBOS 25 YEARS AFTER BIAFRA 1 (1995).
89. See discussion infra notes 193-94 and accompanying text.
90. See supra note 12 and accompanying text.
180 [VOL. 48:165

seventy percent of Biafras population of 14 million people then,91

making them the majority group in a republic that also included key
ethnic groups such as Annangs, Efiks, Ibibios, Ijaws, Ogojas, Ogonis,
and Opobos.92 Given this occurrence, portraiture of Igbos as synony-
mous with Biafra, as some writings do, is inaccurate.93 As a result of
subsequent state creation exercises in the country, Igbos now have
homes in seven out of Nigerias thirty-six states.94
Igbos have been at the forefront in the defense of global human
rights and freedom.95 A number of Igbo slaves exported to the New
World (or Western Hemisphere) committed suicide rather than sub-
mit to slavery in a foreign land.96 Among those who stayed alive,
some like Olaudah Equiano came to play a major role in the anti-
slavery movement.97 Inside Nigeria, Igbos held a record for the most
91. See George A. Elbert et al., An Exchange on Biafra, N.Y. REV. BOOKS, Apr. 23, 1970
(Stanley Diamond replying to responses to his book review, Diamond, supra note 77); Introduc-
ing Biafra, supra note 74, at 3.
92. See Introducing Biafra, supra note 74, at 3-5 (discussing the various peoples that made
up Biafra); KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 83 (referring to a political cartoon); see also Elbert
et al., supra note 91 (Stanley Diamond replying to responses to his book review, Diamond, supra
note 77, and discussing the fundamentals of the minority situation in Biafra).
93. An analogy here, for example, would be to equate Great Britain (made up of the En-
glish, the Welsh of Wales, the Scots of Scotland, and the Irish of Northern Ireland) with England,
even given the overwhelming numerical superiority of the English people who constitute eighty
percent of the country. See THEEN & WILSON, supra note 66, at 20-21.
94. These are Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo, where Igbos form the majority
group; and Delta and Rivers, where they comprise the minority population. The five major Igbo
states, as previously indicated, form the so-called South-East zone, while the two minority Igbo
states, along with other ethnic groups, form the so-called South-South.
95. See generally Chidi G. Osuagwu, World Struggle for a Just World, Part 1, Address
Presented at Lecture Marking Ojukwus 70th Birthday Anniversary, Owerri (Nov. 1, 2003)
[hereinafter Osuagwu, Part 1]; Chidi G. Osuagwu, World Struggle for a Just World, Part 2, Ad-
dress Presented at Lecture Marking Ojukwus 70th Birthday Anniversary, Owerri (Nov. 1, 2003)
[hereinafter Osuagwu, Part 2].
96. See RONALD SEGAL, THE BLACK DIASPORA 30 (1995) (stating that Igbo slaves had a
disquieting tendency to commit suicide in captivity); see also Shaundra L. Lee, Ceremony Pays
Tribute to Ibo Sacrifice, BRUNSWICK NEWS (Ga.), Sept. 2, 2002, at 3A (reporting sanctification of
an Igbo landing site at St. Simons Island, Georgia in the United States, to honor of thirteen
Igbo slaves who, in 1803, drowned themselves at a creek in the Island upon disembarking from
their ship).
97. See OLAUDAH EQUIANO, THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH
EQUIANO: WRITTEN BY HIMSELF (Robert J. Allison ed., 1995). Equiano was born in Igboland,
sold to British slavers when he was eleven, and shipped off to the British West Indies. After
purchasing his freedom in 1766, he became a major figure in the anti-slavery movement in En-
gland. A successful man, Equiano married an English woman and left a huge inheritance for his
family when he died in 1797. Id. at 21. Equianos book is praised as one of the first anti-slavery
books by a former slave. Id. at 1. Igbo slaves also took active part in the anti-slavery initiatives
within the United States, which role White politicians such as former Alabama Governor and
presidential candidate George Wallace lividly recall. See Osuagwu, Part 2, supra note 95 (The
Igbo activities to free the African slaves in the United States made . . . Wallace accuse them in
2004] 181
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tenacious resistance to British colonial rule.98 Also, the first large-

scale uprising against colonial rule in Nigeria, symbolized by the Aba
womens revolts of 1929, took place in Igboland.99 Other Igbo contri-
butions to human rights and fundamental freedoms include the instru-
mental roles prominent Igbos, such as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe,100 Dr.
Akanu Ibiam, Mbonu Ojike, Dr. Kinsley O. Mbadiwe, Mbazulike
Amechi, and Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani, among others, played in the
nationalist struggle that led to Nigerian independence in 1960.
Azikiwe himself led the National Council of Nigerian Citizens
(NCNC, formerly National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons),
the first truly national political party in the country.101
Given this history, it is not surprising that Eastern Nigeria, Igbos
home until 1967, was the first region, in 1956, to achieve self-gov-
erning status.102 Igbos embraced with much greater fervor than any
other single Nigerian ethnic group, the concept of Nigeria but ques-
tioned that concept following the massacres of 1966.103 They proudly
1968 of causing the American civil war. He, therefore, opposed any relief to embattled Biafra
during his 1968 presidential campaign.).
98. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 119 (No Nigerian people
resisted colonialism more tenaciously than the Igbo. . . . The conquest of Igboland took over
twenty years of constant military action.); see also ISICHEI, GENESIS OF A RELATIONSHIP, supra
note 65, at 130 (explaining the peculiar tactical difficulties that gave rise to this long
resistance).
99. Diamond, supra note 77. For one account of these revolts, celebrated in Igboland as
ogu umu nwanyi, meaning womens war in Igbo, see CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH, AF-
RICAN WOMEN: A MODERN HISTORY 163-65 (Beth Gillian Raps trans., 1997). Aba was the city
in Eastern Nigeria where most of the revolts took place.
100. OHA-NA-EZE NDI-IGBO, THE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS OF NDI IGBO
IN THE FEDERATION OF NIGERIA (1966-1999): A CALL FOR REPARATIONS AND APPROPRIATE
RESTITUTION 6 (1999), available at http://www.westafricareview.com/war/vol2.2/ohaneze.pdf
[hereinafter OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION] (This document is A Petition to the Human Rights Viola-
tions Investigating Committee.). Oha-na-eze Ndi Igbo is an Igbo association that calls itself
the apex organization of the entire Igbo people. Id. at 1. Ndi Igbo in the name means Igbo
people in the Igbo language.
101. PETER J. SCHRAEDER, AFRICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 307 (2d ed. 2004).
103. See infra notes 258-60 and accompanying text; see also Introducing Biafra, supra note
74, at 1 (disclosing that before the war, Igbos were the most important single builder of Nigerian
unity who regarded themselves as citizens of Nigeria to an extent that no other group in the
country ever did). Examples of the deep Igbo commitment to Nigerian unity are numerous.
First, the first-elected mayor of the important Igbo city Enugu was a northerner from Sokoto.
ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 229. enugu became the administrative
headquarters of the southern provinces in 1929, the capital of the Eastern region up to 1967 and
the capital of Biafra during the war. By 1963, the city grew in population to nearly 150,000
people. Id. at 204-5. Second, Igbo students studying abroad during the 1950s and 1960s rou-
tinely proudly identified themselves as Nigerians, rather than as Igbos. Id. at 229. Professor
Isichei disclosed that The typical decor of an Igbo students room in London comprised a map
of Africa, a map of Nigeria, a Nigerian calendar and a picture of the University of Ibadan. Id.
at 229-30. Last but not least, the NCNC, led by the Igbo Dr. Azikiwe, was the only national
182 [VOL. 48:165

called themselves Nigerian nationalists when no Nigerian nation ex-

isted and when no one else thought in such terms,104 but expressed
their sense of nationality in the creation of the state of Biafra when
they lost faith in the possibility of a unified Nigeria.105 Battling
against overwhelming odds, for nearly three years, they heroically de-
fended this state in a frantic effort to prevent near-certain extermina-
tion, in the process, testing with their blood, the scope of the right of
self-determination in Africa and demonstrating for the world the felt
need to extend the right beyond its colonial context.106 Since 2000,
as a new century unfolds, Igbos have worked to resurrect the cam-
paign for a separate state that ended with their defeat in 1970.107 This
renewed campaign provides some of the backdrop for this Article.
Igbos have always been a Diasporan people. Nobody knows at
what point in Igbo history this impulse evolved,108 but Igbos left the
ancestral homeland during the slave trade. This was not a voluntary
migration. During the colonial period, the migration continued, first
involuntarily as the result of colonial human rights violation,109 but
later voluntarily. By the time political independence came to Nigeria
in 1960, Igbo migration into all parts of the country had become so
complete that Nigeria became, in effect, an [Igbo] diaspora.110
Later, the migration came to encompass not only West Africa,111
but indeed Africa as a whole112 and beyond. Igbo migration inside
party, and Dr. Azikiwe worked hard to keep it so. Less than half of the NCNC leadership was
Igbo and only three out of the NCNC federal ministers in 1960 were Igbos. Id. at 229. This
disposition of the NCNC contrasts with the demeanor of the Hausa-Fulani-dominated Northern
Peoples Congress (NPC) which refused to even change its name to Nigerian Peoples Congress.
KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 15. Igbo commitment to national unity is a virtue that some-
times is absurdly attributed by non-Igbo scholars to self-interest factors, such as population
pressure and land hunger. But such explanations make no sense since they fail to account
for why a people like the Igbo supposedly suffering from land hunger would seek to separate
from Nigeria.
104. Conor Cruise OBrien, A Condemned People, N.Y. REV. BOOKS, Dec. 21, 1967, at 20.
105. Diamond, supra note 77.
106. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at xii.
107. See discussion infra Part VII(A)(5).
108. For example, archaeological excavations reveal Igbo contacts with Hausa-Fulanis as far
back as the ninth century AD. See OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 6.
109. See ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 209 (providing an account
of how [m]any Igbos left their homes for the first time when conscripted to work on the rail-
ways and how many followed the railway in its progress into northern Nigeria).
110. See Chukwuemeka Onwubu, Ethnic Identity, Political Integration, and National Devel-
opment: The Igbo Diaspora in Nigeria, 13 J. MOD. AFR. STUD. 399, 405 (1975).
111. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 211; Onwubu, supra note 110,
at 404.
112. See IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 2 (There is hardly any part of the [B]lack continent
that you will not find [Igbos] earning a living.).
2004] 183
Howard Law Journal
Nigeria suffered a temporary setback in 1966 following the return to

the East of more than 2 million dispossessed Igbos who fled the mass
killings in northern Nigeria.113 One of the major developments in
Igbo history beginning from the 1970s was the spread of the nation
into all corners of the world. Migration ranks as one of the most
striking features of modern Igbo history.114 Arguably, as a result of
this massive migration, the entirety of the world outside Igboland, in
our time, has become, in effect, an Igbo Diaspora.115
It is in this context that one understands the mission of Igbo na-
tionalist organizations like Ekwe Nche, which work to unite Igbos
from all over the world.116 The organization commits its energies to
an Igbo nation worldwide, made up of Igbos in Igboland and in the
Diaspora. A broader perspective to the definition of the Igbo nation
of the kind Ekwe Nche espouses is an idea whose time has come.
While the ancestral home is still important, given the spread of Igbos
today to all corners of the world, restriction of the definition of the
Igbo people to the group found in Igboland has become too
constrictive.
B. Igbos As a Subject of International Law and a Legitimate

Object of Analysis
A key question is whether Igbos are subjects of international law

and, therefore, a legitimate focus of analysis as here in this Article.
Under the traditional rule, the plain answer to that question is no; this
is because, under that rule, only states are proper subjects of interna-
tional law; individuals and groups are not since they come into contact
with international law only through the medium of their state.117 The
issue for international law, consistent with this rule, is the interna-
tional obligation of a state and not the right of its people; specifically,
only a state or the community of states forming the [UN] can seek
performance of a states obligation to accord self-determination to its
people, not the people of that state.118 Since Igbos as an ethnic
113. See discussion infra notes 170-71 and accompanying text.

115. Id.
116. See EKWE NCHE ORG. CONST. 2.4.1 (adopted Feb. 1999).
117. OKAFOR-OBASI, supra note 19, at 17.
118. An-Naim, supra note 45, at 109 (quoting S. Prakash Sinha, Self-Determination in Inter-
national Law and Its Applicability to the Baltic Peoples, in RES BALTICA 256 (A Sprudz & A.
Rusis eds., 1968)).
184 [VOL. 48:165

group or nation within Nigeria are not a state, under the traditional
rule they are not a proper subject of international law.
However, many now view this traditional view as antiquated if
not downright inaccurate.119 Two alternative interpretations of inter-
national law make Igbos subject to international lawand therefore
legitimate object of analysis, as here. The first is the peoples inter-
pretation, which gives people the right of self-determination in in-
ternational human rights instruments.
Self-determination is firmly established today in global human
rights instruments as a human right of peoples, not states; African
and UN human rights documents, all view the right to self-determina-
tion as belonging to peoples.120 So peoples within a nation-state
today are entitled to assert their rights to self-determination against
their nation-states.121 In granting peoples the right to self-determi-
nation, an underlying assumption these international instruments
share, is that peoples are represented by their states in the interna-
tional arena. In short, people are the holders of the right to self-deter-
mination, but states are the entities, in line with the traditional rule,
charged with the obligation to secure the enjoyment of the right do-
mestically and internationally.122 This interpretation, which distin-
guishes a people from their state, is significant because it gives a group
within a country or a people some recourse if the state fails to honor
its obligation to safeguard their right to self-determination.123
Professor An-Naim laments, It is ironic that the independent
nation state, once perceived as the essential prerequisite for the
achievement of the peoples right to self-determination, is now seen
by many people(s) as a major obstacle to the realization of that
right.124 Where this becomes the case, as this Article demonstrates
in the case of Igbos, an ethnic group is then charged with the obliga-
tion to safeguard its rights and therefore is a proper subject of interna-
tional law in its own right.
In line with this interpretation, the ACHPR has been read as re-
serving a certain amount of political and economic space for peoples
qua peoples, or peoples sovereignty, in situations where the in-
119. See id. along with the authorities Professor An-Naim cited at 123 n.8.
120. See discussion supra note 43 and accompanying text.
122. Id. at 111.
123. Id.
124. Id. at 106.
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terests of the people and those of the state diverge.125 Professor

Umozurikes position that breaches of human rights, especially gross
breaches, are taken out of domestic jurisdiction,126 also appears to
agree with this outcome. We still need to demonstrate (rather than
simply assert) that Igbos qualify as people entitled to the right to
self-determination under international human rights instruments. UN
and African human rights instruments left people undefined.127
Definitions of people emphasize the attributes of commonality of
interests, group identity, distinctiveness, and a territorial link.128
Consistent with these attributes, an ethnic, religious, or linguistic mi-
nority is a people entitled to the right to self-determination, either
internally within an established state or externally through secession
under appropriate circumstances.129 Igbos are people within the
meaning of UN and African human rights instruments entitled to the
right to self-determination either internally within a state or externally
outside it because they are an ethnic or linguistic minority. A second
interpretation that makes Igbos a subject of international law is what
may be called the shifting obligation interpretation. Under this in-
terpretation developed by the Soviet scholar D.B. Levin:
When a nation exercises its right to self-determination, form[s] an
independent state, voluntarily remains in a multinational [multicul-
tural] state or joins another multinational [multicultural] state, its
right to the free determination of its further internal political, eco-
nomic, social and cultural status passes to the sphere of state law of
the state to which the nation now belongs. But this holds good only
125. See Richard N. Kiwanuka, The Meaning of People in the African Charter on Human
and Peoples Rights, 82 AM. J. INTL L. 81, 83 (1988). This is also the approach adopted by the
Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples of July 4, 1976, otherwise known as the Algiers
Declaration. The Declaration is a populist document adopted by a group of people in liberation
struggles, including lawyers, economists, and politicians. The text of the Algiers Declaration can
be found in UN LAW/FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS: TWO TOPICS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 219-23
(Antonio Cassese ed., 1979). Much of the confusion surrounding the meaning and implication of
the right to self-determination, as Professor An-Naim says, derives from its conceptualization as
vested in one single entity, the nation-state, whereas, in actuality, this right can be satisfied
through a variety of entities, including ethnic groups, exercising different functions of govern-
ment. An-Naim, supra note 45, at 108.
126. UMOZURIKE, supra note 23, at 7-8.
127. [D]rafters of international instruments sometimes prefer that a central concept or term
be defined by subsequent practice and jurisprudence rather than impose their own definition.
For example, the International Law Commission declined to define state in its draft Declara-
tion of the Rights and Duties of state, preferring rather that the term be interpreted in accor-
dance with international practice. See An-Naim, supra note 45, at 112.
128. See id.
129. Id.; see also id. at 117-18; see also Kiwanuka, supra note 125, at 80-101 (identifying sev-
eral definitions of people under the ACHPR).
186 [VOL. 48:165

as long as the conditions on which the nation became part of the

given state are not violated by this state and as long as the nations
desire to stay within it remains in force, and it is not compelled to
do so by coercive means. As soon as one of these phenomena oc-
cur, the question again passes from the sphere of state law into the
sphere of international law.130
Under this alternative interpretation, Igbos also qualify as sub-
jects of international law because, violations of the original multi-na-
tionality compact have taken place in Nigeria such as to allow for the
passage of the obligation for safeguarding their human rights from
Nigerian domestic law to international law. The significance of
Levins shifting-obligation theory is that a nations or ethnic groups
right to self-determination does not become exhausted with their in-
corporation into a multinational state, even where that initial incorpo-
ration is consensual.131
A similarity exists between Kiwanukas interest divergence, (or
peoples sovereignty) theory discussed above as part of the peoples
interpretation, and the shifting obligation interpretation: both will
make ethnic groups like Igbos subject to international law. But the
two differ in that the Kiwanuka approach is automatic, (an ethnic
group becomes a subject of international law once it is found to be a
people) something that the shifting obligation interpretation lacks
since it requires that the initial condition for a groups entry into a
multinational compact change for a shift to occur from domestic
into international law.
III. DOCUMENTING ABUSES OF IGBO HUMAN RIGHTS

IN NIGERIA
A. Before Independence: Atrocities Arising from the Slave Trade
and Colonial Rule
1. The Slave Trade
The trans-Atlantic slave trade from the fifteenth to the late nine-
teenth centuries inflicted a heavy toll on Igbo societies. Combined
with the Arab slave trade that preceded it,132 this traffic in humans
130. An-Naim, supra note 45, at 109 (quoting D.B. Levin, The Principle of Self-Determina-
tion of Nations in International Law, SOVIET Y.B. INTL L. 1962 at 46).
131. See An-Naim, supra note 45, at 110.
132. The Arab slave trade took place beginning from the ninth century and encompassed
three slave networks, namely: the trans-Saharan slave trade, which principally sold slaves to the
Mediterranean coastal region; the Red Sea slave trade, which sent slaves to the Middle East and
2004] 187
Howard Law Journal
lasted for a period of thirteen centuries and represent[s] thirteen lost

centuries in the struggle toward modernity and human rights in Af-
rica.133 Altogether the European and Arab slave trades were re-
sponsible for the forced removal and enslavement of more than 30
million Africans.134 The fate of the slave, from capture to arrival in
the New World (North and South America, and the Caribbean), was
one laced with human rights horrors.135 About 20 million people were
transported from Africa, resulting in depopulation of large areas of
the continent.136 Professor Umozurike assesses that [t]he trade was
totally extractive of human resources, negated political, economic, so-
cial and cultural development and stultified the growth of civilization
and that it sired tremendous personal insecurity as well as a degra-
dation in the quality of life.137 No documentation exists as to the
exact number of people from Igboland lost to the slave trade, but the
figure probably runs into several millions.138 Igboland was one of the
areas of West Africa most seriously affected by the slave trade.139
For the entire duration of the infamous traffic in humans until it en-
ded in the nineteenth century, Igbo nationals were exported as
South Asia; and the Swahili coast slave trade, which focused on the Indian Ocean islands and
South and Southeast Asia. This slave trade is sometimes referred to as the Islamic slave trade in
recognition of the fact that it was dominated by the Islamic world. SCHRAEDER, supra note 101,
at 52.
133. Aka, Military, Globalization, and Human Rights, supra note 20, at 378.
134. SCHRAEDER, supra note 101, at 8.
135. According to this account by Professor Umozurike:
The suffering of a slave started from the time he was captured . . . and detailed for the
march to the slave market where he was sold to the intermediary slave-trader. The
tortuous march then started to the coast or river port; the slaves were tied to each
other, with chains around their necks and their hands tied behind their backs.
There, the [W]hite slave trader was waiting for his wares. The slave port and island of
Goree off Dakar . . . has a typical slave fortressairy rooms upstairs for the traders,
dark and insanitary dungeons downstairs for the slaves awaiting transhipment to the
Americas. The slave ship itself was the ultimate in human degradation, for the slaves
were packed like sardines and left in chains.
Stubborn or sick ones were thrown overboard. . . . It was not unusual to have an
[eighty percent] casualty rate in a boat.
UMOZURIKE, supra note 23, at 16-17.
136. Id. at 17. The trade was utterly wasteful of African lives: for about every 300 slaves
that survived in the [New World], [about] 700 had died500 during the raids and the march to
the coast, 125 in slave ships, and [75] after landing in the New World. Id. (citing 1 DOCUMENTS
OF WEST INDIAN HISTORY 158-60; P. CURTIN, THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE A CENSUS (1965)).
137. Id.
138. See ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 46-47; see also ISICHEI,
GENESIS OF A RELATIONSHIP, supra note 65, at 43 (providing rough estimates of the number of
slaves involved).
188 [VOL. 48:165

slaves.140 Igbo slaves constituted a major proportion of the estimated

20 million people transported to the New World.141 European slave
traders used techniques that gave little regard to human rights, such as
kidnapping and wars, to acquire slaves in Igboland,142 and Igbo
slaves shared quite a bit of the already recounted disabilities for slaves
that characterized the middle passage, including deprivations of life,
freedom, and unspeakable indignities. The casualties from the trade
also included those Igbo slaves who, upon arriving in the Western
Hemisphere, committed suicide, preferring death to captivity in a for-
eign land.143
In addition to the described general effects on African societies,
the trade also had negative ramifications for the texture of Igbo life,
effects, as the historian Professor Isichei points out, evident in evils
such as human sacrifices, trials by ordeal, and the prevalence of kid-
napping.144 Although Igbo elites, like their counterparts in other Af-
rican societies, took part in the overseas slave trade, the collaboration
does not minimize European culpability; the ignominious trade in
humans was by and large a one-sided relationship, founded and
maintained on [European] threat of force.145 As Basil Davidson ex-
plains, Africa and Europe were jointly involved. . . . Europe domi-
nated the connection, shaped and promoted the slave trade, and
continually turned it to European advantage and to African loss.146
Nonetheless, application of the human rights concept to the period
poses a problem because human rights practice today, as opposed to
freedom or the idea of rights, is a recent development that is traceable
only to the formation of the UN system after World War II.147 In any
case, violations during this period preceded the formation of present-
day Nigeria and would therefore not qualify as abuses in Nigeria.
140. Id. at 45. The territory that later became Nigeria was once called the Slave Coast, in
testimony to the huge slave activities that went on there for hundreds of years. MICHAEL
CROWDER, THE STORY OF NIGERIA 53 (4th ed. 1978).
141. See ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 47 (articulating features
which made Igboland particularly susceptible to slave raiding).
142. Id. at 45-47.
144. ISICHEI, GENESIS OF A RELATIONSHIP, supra note 65, at 59-60.
145. Elikia MBokolo, Who Was Responsible?, in GLOBAL STUDIES: AFRICA 201-02 (F. Jef-
fress Ramsay ed., 7th ed. 1997).
146. Id. (quoting BASIL DAVIDSON, BLACK MOTHER: THE YEARS OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE
TRADE (1961)).
147. Aka, Military, Globalization, and Human Rights, supra note 20, at 375-76.
2004] 189
Howard Law Journal
2. British Colonial Rule in Nigeria
In contrast to atrocities during the slavery era, violations that oc-

curred during the colonial period qualify as abuses in Nigeria, given
the evolution during this era of a government, albeit non-indigenous,
charged with the responsibility of enforcing human rights. British con-
trol of Nigeria took place from the late nineteenth century until the
countrys independence in 1960. Colonial control is inconsistent with
any notion of human rights since it negates the right of people to de-
termine their destiny for themselves rather than have foreigners do so
for them.148 European colonial institutions were primarily structures
of exploitation, despotism, and degradation;149 colonialism, wherever
it existed in Africa, was something imposed by violence, and main-
tained by its potential capacity for violence.150 Europe had little in
the way of a human rights plan for its colonies in Africa beyond their
use as sources for raw materials for European industrialization and as
markets for excess outputs.151
In addition to these general features, there were also some impor-
tant senses in which British colonialism impacted Igbos differently as
an ethnic group with negative ramifications for their individual and
collective human rights. First, British indirect rule in Igboland de-
stroyed the accountability that was an important feature of the tradi-
tional Igbo governance system.152 Second, because Igbos resisted
colonialism more fiercely than any other Nigerian people, [t]he con-
quest of Igboland took over twenty years of constant military ac-
tion153 with more room for abuse of Igbo human rights than would
probably otherwise have been the case. Instances of violence targeted
at the Igbo nation that occurred during the period of British colonial
rule in Nigeria include the Aba Womens War of 1929 (revealingly
often referred to as riots), in which over fifty women were killed by
British forces;154 and the bloodbath in 1948, minimized as the Enugu
148. Id. at 371-81.

149. Robert Fatton, Jr., Liberal Democracy in Africa, 105 POL. SCI. Q. 455, 457 (1990).
151. See generally LORD LUGARD, THE DUAL MANDATE IN BRITISH TROPICAL AFRICA (5th
ed. 1965).
152. EZENWA-OHAETO, CHINUA ACHEBE: A BIOGRAPHY 220 (1997) (citing the views of
Chinua Achebe). The classic work depicting the enormously devastating impact of British
colonialism on Igbo traditional society is CHINUA ACHEBE, THINGS FALL APART (1959).
153. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 119 (emphasis added).
154. See COQUERY-VIDROVITCH, supra note 99, at 162-65.
190 [VOL. 48:165

Colliery Shooting Incident, in which twenty-one coal miners were

killed, and fifty-one wounded.155
Third, the foundation for the pattern of abuse of Igbo human
rights with impunity by other ethnic groups, which came to character-
ize post-colonial Nigeria, was laid during British rule.156 Two inci-
dents which require mentioning are the cold-blooded killings of
hundreds of Igbos and the destruction of Igbo property and wealth,
usually characterized as riots, that occurred in 1945 and 1953, re-
spectively, in Jos and Kano,157 two metropolitan cities in the North
with high populations of Igbos. A constitutional conference in 1954
acknowledged the deep realities of the [Kano] confrontation.158
The destruction also convinced British colonial authorities that Nige-
ria, if it was to be a nation, must be a federation, with as few subjects
reserved for the Central Government as would preserve national
unity.159 But little other corrective action took place; mere acknowl-
edgment of the gravity of the attacks could only be cold comfort for
those damaged by the unprovoked atrocities.
Finally, for those enamored of the civilizing effect of European
colonialism, British rule produced few socioeconomic human rights
for Igbos. In 1918, the colonial government devoted only about 1% of
its budget in Nigeria on education, an allocation that increased to only
between 3% and 4% by the 1930s.160 These allocations stand little
comparison, for example, to the Eastern Nigerian government, which,
as a self-governing unit in 1958-1959, spent over 40% of its revenue on
education.161 Because of the low colonial investment in education,
Igbos had no university graduates until the 1930s.162 In short, as Pro-
fessor Isichei states poignantly in her work on Igbo history, The im-

156. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 10, 12, 15; see also OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra
note 100, at 9 (persuasively arguing that the Civil War from 1967 to 1970 was a culmination of
the forces of ethnic particularism, which had been artificially repressed during the colonial
regime).
157. KIRK-GREENE 1 supra note 86, at 10; Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 221
n.66. The problem with appellations like riots in describing what happened is that they give
little sense of the extent of destructiveness involved nor of the premeditation and deliberateness
preceding the particular act of violence. For example, the Kano uprising caused such damage as
to necessitate the deployment of troops on a scale unprecedented in the North since the pacifi-
cation era of fifty years earlier. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 10. Such destructiveness
must have been anything other than the spontaneous, uncoordinated action of a mob.
158. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 10.
159. Id. (quoting the Colonial Secretarys diary).
161. Id.
162. Id. at 188.
2004] 191
Howard Law Journal
portant thing to the historian of Igboland is the sobering reflection

that after half a century of colonial rule and mission, over 80% of the
population was illiterate.163
B. From Independence to 1970: Atrocities Arising from Massacres

and a Civil War Conducted in Willful Breach of the
Geneva Convention
Human rights atrocities against Igbos in the years after indepen-
dence until 1970 arose from two successive, horrific tragedies, namely:
(1) the wanton massacres of Igbos living in northern Nigeria by
Hausa-Fulanis in 1966; and (2) the Nigerian governments conduct of
the civil war from 1967 to 1970.
1. The Massacres of 1966

The massacres followed a bloody counter-coup in July 1966, sup-
posedly staged by northern soldiers to avenge what they believed to
be an Igbo-inspired coup that had taken place six months earlier.164
163. Id. at 199.

164. Despite the ethnic distribution in the casualties of the January 1966 coup in favor of
Igbos and against Hausa-Fulanis and Yorubas, uncontradicted findings since 1966 have not vali-
dated the allegation that this first military coup was Igbo-inspired. Rather, the coup was a well-
meaning attempted take-over that was poorly executed. The coup failed in the Eastern and Mid-
Western Regions and Lagos where no important politicians or military officers died compared to
the Northern and Western Regions where the failed takeover was executed as planned and
therefore resulted in the killings of important politicians and military officers. For one thing, it is
inconceivable that Igbos would mastermind a coup to overthrow a government that was headed
as President by one of their own, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Though under Nigerias then-prevailing
parliamentary government, real power resided in the Prime Minister rather than the President,
the President still served as a symbol of the entire country. At least the Nigerian federal govern-
ment was then partly Igbo-headed and partly northern-(or Hausa-Fulani) led. A second reason
why the coup could not have been Igbo-inspired was that the plotters desired to release Chief
Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba leader, then doing time in prison for the treasonable felony of
plotting to overthrow the government, and make him Prime Minister. An Igbo-inspired coup
designed to assert Igbo domination of the country would not be making a Yoruba Prime Minis-
ter. Third, rather than just Igbos, other ethnic groups, such as the Yorubas, participated in the
coup which, as already indicated, would have installed Yorubas Chief Awolowo as Prime Minis-
ter if it had succeeded. Fourth, Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, who became the
Head of State and arguable beneficiary of the coup was not part of the coup plan and was only
invited to take office by virtue of his position as the most high-ranking military officer and gen-
eral commander of the armed forces at the time. Ironsi was, in fact, on the list of military of-
ficers the plotters penciled down for elimination. The army leadership under General Ironsi
accepted the request of what was left of the badly-shaken political class to restore order on the
condition that it hold power temporarily until matters stabilize. See Dr. Azikwe, Statement to
the Press in England, Jan. 16, 1966, reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 127-29. Ex-
cept for the North where the reaction was more mixed, public opinion across the country wel-
comed the news of the military takeover with joyous enthusiasm. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 12;
ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 244. So, as it turned out, none of the
grounds Hausa-Fulanis adduced for perpetrating the 1966 massacres have any validity. The plot
192 [VOL. 48:165

The counter-coup practically wiped out the officer corps of Igbos in

the Nigerian army, including the Head of State, General Aguiyi
Ironsi, who was abducted by the mutinous soldiers and murdered.165
The northerners blamed General Ironsi for promulgating a decree
that unified the civil services of Nigeria, until then regionalized.166
The accompanying massacres claimed over 100,000 innocent Igbo ci-
vilians.167 The violence on Igbos included looting and destruction of
valuable Igbo property and investments, such as homes, shops,
schools, and businesses.168 These losses do not include permanent
psychological and emotional traumas the horrific experience left on
individuals lucky enough to survive the killings.169 On top of all of
these, about 2 million Igbos living in northern Nigeria fled to the East-
ern Region, leaving behind their jobs and whatever personal belong-
ings that had not already been destroyed by their northern
tormentors.170
was a purely military affair that had nothing to do with any imaginary Igbo conspiracy to elimi-
nate northern control and dominate the country. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 10;
see also Larry Diamond, Nigeria: Pluralism, Statism, and the Struggle for Democracy, in 2 DE-
MOCRACY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: AFRICA 33, 43 (Larry Diamond et al. eds., 1988) (de-
bunking the ethnic motive adduced for the coup and commenting that the coupmakers struck
primarily to end a corrupt and discredited despotism that could only be removed by violence ).
Something was needed to stop the endless course of chaos and destruction before January 15,
1966 that seized the country, IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 11, and this first coup did that. Unlike
the second coup, the first coup has sired a number of studies, some of them by the participants
themselves. These include ADEWALE ADEMOYEGA, WHY WE STRUCK: THE STORY OF THE
FIRST NIGERIAN COUP (1981) (Yoruba participant); BEN GBULIE, NIGERIAS FIVE MAJORS
(1981) (Igbo participant); ROBIN LUCKHAM, THE NIGERIAN MILITARY: A SOCIOLOGICAL ANAL-
YSIS OF AUTHORITY AND REVOLT, 1960-1967 (1971); and OLUSEGUN OBASANJO NZEOGWU: AN
INTIMATE PORTRAIT OF MAJOR CHUKWUMA KADUNA NZEOGWU (1987).
165. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 11 (estimating the number of Igbo military
officers killed in the coup, including General Ironsi himself, to be over 300).
166. Like the allegation based on Igbo conspiracy to dominate the country, the ground for
the mass massacres, anchored in the Unification Decree No. 34 of 1966, released by the Ironsi
government, is also without foundation, given that subsequent military governments, all of them
headed by non-Igbos, have used exactly the same command structure of unitary system con-
ceived by General Ironsi. Id. at 10.
167. See OSAGHAE, supra note 87, at 63 (putting the number of casualties at 80,000 to
100,000, not counting the several thousands more wounded).
168. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 15; see also OSAGHAE, supra note 87, at 69.
169. See OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 15.
170. See OBrien, supra note 104, at 14; Ojukwu Rules Out Surrender, reprinted in 2 A.H.M.
KIRK-GREENE, CRISIS AND CONFLICT IN NIGERIA: A DOCUMENTARY SOURCEBOOK 1966-1969,
at 174 (1971) [hereinafter KIRK-GREENE 2]. To get a sense of how progressively nightmarish
things became over time, by 1969, nearly 6 million refugees existed in the East. Conor Cruise
OBrien, Biafra Revisited, N.Y. REV. BOOKS, May 22, 1969 (quoting the Biafran Rehabilitation
Commission, an agency that oversaw the welfare of refugees in Biafra). The massacres and
resultant exodus to the East turned Igboland into a region of people impoverished from top to
bottom. Diamond, supra note 77, at n.10.
2004] 193
Howard Law Journal
The result was a mass exodus of dispossessed people, which, had

it occurred across international borders, rather than domestically,
would have been classified among the great refugee problems of the
twentieth century.171 Although most of the deaths occurred in the
North, killings of Igbos also took place in other non-Igbo parts of the
country.172 Also, besides Hausa-Fulanis, other ethnic groups, includ-
ing Binis, Idomas, Tivs, and Yorubas, also participated in the mas-
sacres.173 To allay Hausa-Fulani fear of Igbo domination, General
Ironsi appointed a northerner, Yakubu Gowon, as second-in-com-
mand, and surrounded himself with northerners.174 These well-mean-
ing gestures appeared to have served little purpose, just as the shift in
control back to northerners did not stop the killings of innocent Igbos.
Rather than stop the violence, Nigerian soldiers actually incited and
participated in the killings175 while the national government now
under General Gowon176 looked on.
Some of the methods used in the killings were surpassingly brutal
and barbaric.177 They included throat slitting, beheading, cutting open
pregnant women and killing their unborn children, and burying peo-
ple alive in deep wells. Consider also the unimaginable torture
plucking victims eyes out of their sockets, cutting their tongues, cut-
ting their testicles, abduction of Igbo girls from their homes, rape,
forcing Igbo women into sexual intercourse with mad men, and forc-
ing Igbo girls into sex in leper colonies.178 The deliberate nature of
171. OBrien, supra note 104, at 14.

172. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 13.
173. Id. Some Tivs turned fatally upon Igbos who passed through Tivland as they headed for
Igboland. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 13.
174. The New York Times, in fact, initially incorrectly speculated General Ironsis downfall
as a second southern coup, this time engineered by more young Turks . . . reportedly dismayed
by . . . [Ironsis selling out] to the Moslem North. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 53 n.4; see
also CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU, BIAFRA: SELECTED SPEECHES AND RANDOM
THOUGHTS OF C. ODUMEGWU OJUKWU 4 (1969) (calling Ironsis policy toward the North
appeasement).
175. See, e.g., ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE. supra note 4, at 245 (quoting a book
on Nigeria by a foreign scholar); WILLIAM D. GRAF, THE NIGERIAN STATE 45 (1988).
176. See infra note 186.
177. In its petition to the Oputa Panel, Oha-na-eze called the methods of killings more
bestial and gruesome than the worst holocaust in history. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note
100, at 15. One individual who testified at the Oputa Panel appeared to share the same view
when he called the methods the most sadistic and inhuman methods that made Jewish holo-
caust appear like mercy killings. Uba Aham, Biafra, THENEWS, May 21, 2001, at 26.
178. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 14-15; see also NTIEYONG U. AKPAN, THE
STRUGGLE FOR SECESSION, 1966-1970 xii-xii (1971); ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE,
supra note 4, at 245-46. Akpan, who was Chief Secretary in the Biafran Government during the
civil war, described the obvious horror which struck some dignitaries from Western Nigeria
who visited a public hospital in Enugu, the Eastern Nigerian and later Biafra capital, where the
194 [VOL. 48:165

the acts, coupled with the uncontradicted official participation of the

Gowon government in the misconduct, or its complicit stance in the
face of a legal duty to put a stop to the atrocities, supported the con-
tention by people who viewed the massacres as pogrom, genocide, or
ethnic cleansing.179 Each of these assessments finds justifications in
the facts.180
As the Igbo cultural organization Oha-na-eze argued in its peti-
tion to the Oputa panel, the misconduct by the North and their ac-
complices against the Igbos was an unwarranted and unjustified
misplaced aggression.181 Further, as the organization correctly ob-
serves, this was the only time in the entire history of a country marred
by numerous coups that the ethnic kindred of the perpetrators of a
coup were visited with killings.182 A 1968 study by a team of over
sixty British subjects, including a former British governor of eastern
Nigeria, into the causes and consequences of the Nigerian civil war,
found the massacres to be an organized affair for which there
can be no conceivable justification.183 The study noted that Igbos
were made to feel themselves rejected by the most brutal possible
wounded and maimed were receiving treatment. According to him, the visitors were all so
shocked that they could not enjoy the hospitality offered them, and before returning home they
surrendered all money on them to the Rehabilitation Commission. AKPAN, supra, at xii.
Akpan also wrote that [t]he same feeling was evident in the team of top civil servants who
visited Enugu from Lagos and were taken to the same hospital. But what they saw was only a
fraction of the story. Id.
179. Oha-na-eze uses the three terms, or at least two of them, interchangeably as the follow-
ing sentence indicates: Both in scale and method of execution, the killings represented the most
heinous crimes in human history, given their commission with such absolute impunity that
even dangerous vermins that exist outside the law seem to enjoy more rights. The crimes were
as wide in scope as the genocide against the Jews but more sadistic and inhuman in implementa-
tion than the holocaust. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 15 (emphasis added); see
also id. at 11, 12, 18 (referencing the killings as genocide). Such assessment agrees with the
findings of judicial inquiries such as the Onyiuke panel, after Hon. Justice G.C.M. Onyiuke, a
Justice of the Court of Appeal, established by the Government of Eastern Nigeria. The commis-
sion based its findings on evidence it collected from 235 surviving victims and eyewitnesses. Id.
at 11. The Eastern Nigerian government also assessed the mass killings as pogrom, see its 1966
publication under this title quoted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 12-13, as well as pre-
meditated murder. Id. at 449.
180. There was one account provided by the Eastern Nigerian government in a publication
appropriately titled pogrom where Igbo student survivors of the mass killings from institutions
of learning in Northern Nigeria had all the fingers of their right hands chopped offthat would
help in curtailing, they were told, the educational lead of Eastern Nigeria over the North.
KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 13 (quoting GOVERNMENT OF EASTERN NIGERIA, POGROM 7
(1966)).
182. Id.
183. Elbert et al., supra note 91 n.6 (Stanley Diamond replying to responses to his book
review, Diamond, supra note 77).
2004] 195
Howard Law Journal
means from the North and from Nigeria as a whole.184 Revenge kill-
ings of northerners said to have taken place in Enugu and other parts
of Eastern Nigeria,185 were a spontaneous response to the gruesome-
ness of the northern attack on victims who survived, and were
dwarfed by the surpassing scale of violence and brutality perpetrated
by northerners.
2. Conduct of the Biafran War

a. Partition of the Nigerian Government and Surveying the Scale
of Igbo Destructiveness in the Conflict
Two regimes emerged in Nigeria that did not see eye-to-eye in the
aftermath of the July 1966 coup and the massacres of Igbos. These
were the Nigerian regime in Lagos under General Gowon that re-
placed the Ironsi government and the Eastern Nigerian government
under General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu,186 headquartered
in Enugu, which did not recognize the new government in Lagos.187 A
hardening of positions took place between the two sides,188 both of
which traded unfriendly charges and recriminations between each
other.189 Attempts at peace talks within the country failed to break
184. Id.
185. AKPAN, supra note 178, at xii.
186. Both Ojukwu and Gowon were promoted Generals of their respective armies during
the war, Gowon following the start of the civil war in July 1967 and Ojukwu in 1969. See
OLADIMEJI ABORISADE & ROBERT J. MUNDT, POLITICS IN NIGERIA 18-19 (1998). The Nigerian
army recognizes Ojukwu by his rank before the civil war, rather than as General. KIRK-GREENE
1, supra note 86, at 98. The two major figures in the civil war are addressed henceforth in this
Article as General both in testimony to the fact of their promotion to this rank and because of
the practice of referring to top soldiers, especially those who also held political office, as gener-
als, regardless of their actual rank, in the same way that college instructors, irrespective of their
real ranks, are often called professors in the United States.
187. Ojukwus position, which remained consistent throughout the war, was that Gowon
headed a government of rebels who had kidnapped their Supreme Commander [referring to
the murdered General Ironsi]. To accept him would be the acceptance of permanent indiscipline
within the Army. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 392; see also OJUKWU, supra note 174,
at 157.
188. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at xii (stating that the Ojukwu government repre-
sented a tenaciously felt desire for the extension of the right to self-determination beyond its
colonial context, and the Gowon government a no less fervently held and a legitimately
founded belief in the indivisibility and integrity of one Nigeria ).
189. See id. at 13 (conveying that the Hausa-Fulani-dominated Gowon government accused
Igbos of being militantly chauvinistic, creating apprehension in the minds of others, while
the Ojukwu government accused Hausa-Fulanis of nursing the mind frame that there can be no
peace and unity in Nigeria unless the country is ruled and dominated by the North). See also id.
at 389 where during a conference, General Ojukwu charged: [T]he Northern idea of unity is
that of horse and rider, the horse being the rest of the country and the rider being the North . . . .
The Ironsi regime was overthrown because it happened to be headed by a person who was not of
196 [VOL. 48:165

this polarization.190 A peace conference in Aburi, Ghana, in 1967,

held at the instance of the Ghana government at which the parties
worked out an agreement for a loose confederal government,191 ini-
tially appeared to hold the promise of breaking the deadlock.
Alternatively, not only did General Gowon abrogate the agree-
ment,192 but he also subsequently proceeded to unilaterally carve the
country into twelve states,193 without consulting the Eastern Nigerian
government.194 It was in this setting that the Eastern Nigeria Consult-
ative Assembly, a kind of legislature,195 instructed the Ojukwu gov-
Northern origin . . . . The pogrom had been directed against Easterners because the North saw in
them a source of obstacle to their eternal domination of the country.
190. See Summary of Proposals, reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 245-54.
191. See Official Records of the Minutes at the Meeting in Aburi, reprinted in KIRKE-
GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 315-40.
192. See Statement, Government of Tanzania, Tanzania Recognizes Biafra (Apr. 13, 1968),
reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 209 [hereinafter Tanzania Recognizes Biafra]
([T]he necessity for an arrangement which would take account of the fears created during 1966
was accepted at Aburi, and renounced thereafter by the Federal Authorities.); see also General
Gowons broadcast to Nigerians emphasizing why the idea of a temporary confederation
agreed to at Aburi would be unworkable, reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 306-
10. Gowon stated that he was confident that Nigerians can agree on a constitution which will
preserve the integrity of the country and satisfy the aspirations of the vast majority of our peo-
ple. He did not accomplish this goal.
193. See Gowons Broadcast to the Nation Dividing Nigeria into Twelve States (radio broad-
cast, May 27, 1967), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 444-49.
194. The state creation exercise divided the Northern Region into six and the Eastern Re-
gion into three while leaving the Western Region and Mid-Western Region intact. The Mid-
Western Region was too small to be carved into more than one state. But General Gowon
needed to ingratiate the Yorubas whose leaders support he would need in the war to come. The
exercise put Igbos, bereft of all access to the sea, into one state denoted the East Central State
and created two states for eastern minorities with a combined numerical population much less
than the Igbos. Before 1967, these minorities advocated for only one state, known as the Cala-
bar-Ogoja-River (or COR) state, but by this exercise General Gowon gave them two, one state
more than they requested. The Eastern Nigerian government portrayed the decree implement-
ing the exercise as a one man coup detat, adding that the Eastern Region viewed itself as
neither a part of [Nigeria] nor a nation in her own righta state of affairs which the [14] million
people of Eastern Nigeria could not continue to suffer. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 97.
The state creation exercise put one part of Igbos into Rivers State, another into the Mid-West,
yet others into Cross River State, and left the rest of Igbos isolated and landlocked in what was
called East Central State. It was, according to Oha-na-eze, an act calculated to paralyze the
Igbos and incite [their] neighbors against them. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 16.
For similar assessments of this measure, see KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 97 (calling the
state creation exercise a ploy to strike at the very concept of a viable, sovereign Biafra and
reduce it to nothing more than an impoverished, landlocked, over-populated Ibo province, but
also noting: Gowons shrewd move to block secession turned out to be the final pressure on the
trigger releasing the explosion); Senator Eugene McCarthy, Speech Urging American Interven-
tion, May 16, 1969, reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 401, 402-03 [hereinafter
McCarthy, Speech] (calling the twelve-state structure an action designed to confine Igbos to a
crowded, infertile region smaller than their ancestral homeland, with no access to the sea to
break their influence).
195. Professor Kirk-Greene called the Consultative Assembly the parallel to what the other
Regions had called leaders of thought. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 59. This is an unfair
2004] 197
Howard Law Journal
ernment to declare Eastern Nigeria independent as the Republic of

Biafra at the earliest practicable date,196 a mandate General
Ojukwu implemented three days later on May 30, 1967.197 Easterners
felt they were leaving a country that no longer wanted them;198 Igbo
resolve to leave Nigeria grew in the wake of the pogroms.199 In the
language of one Biafran government statement, Living together with
Northerners had been intolerable from the beginning: By the end of
1966 it had become impossible.200
Following General Gowons rejection of confederation as un-
workable, university students in Eastern Nigeria demonstrated with
placards proclaiming the push is complete, a reference to General
Ojukwus promise that the East would not secede unless it was pushed
out.201 Judging by demonstrations all across Eastern Nigeria favoring
separate existence, [i]t was . . . obvious by May 1967 that most Eas-
terners preferred secession to any other form of association with the
rest of Nigeria.202 Easterners based their decision to leave Nigeria
on liberal political philosophy (they are holders of inalienable
rights) and immediate security needs (they can no longer be pro-
assessment that fails to give credit where it is due to the pronounced democratic quality of the
Eastern Nigeria and later Biafran government, in contradistinction to Nigeria where a military
junta kept all power and did not bother to engage in any pretense of basing governmental deci-
sion on any input from the citizenry. One U.S. senator who lambasted the bankruptcy of
American policy of one Nigeriaat any cost, was convinced that Biafra . . . has demonstrated
that it represents the interest of its people. McCarthy, Speech, supra note 194, at 405.
196. OJUKWU, supra note 174, at 191-94; The Republic of Biafra: Resolution by the Eastern
Region Consultative Assembly (adopted May 27, 1967), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note
86, at 449-50.
197. See OJUKWU, supra note 174, at 193-96; Ojukwu Secedes and Declares the Republic of
Biafra (May 30, 1967), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 451-53. May 30 has sym-
bolic importance for Igbos and other Easterners since, as Professor Kirk-Greene correctly points
out, this was the anniversary of the bloody riots against the Igbo in the North which Biafra now
regarded as the first of the intimidating moves to cast her bodily out of Nigeria. KIRK-GREENE
1, supra note 86, at 97-98.
198. See id. at 8 (recounting the Eastern Nigerian position that Biafra did not secede: Biafra
was pushed out).
199. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 246 (Before September
[1966], only a small minority had advocated secession. After September, it was probably the
wish of the majority.).
200. Biafran Memorandum Circulated to Heads of State at O.A.U. (Sept. 1967), in KIRK-
GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 168.
201. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 73. For the source of Ojukwus complete push
statement, see the text of his March 13, 1967 conference, in id. at 393. The Biafran leader said
push would become complete if Eastern Nigeria was either attacked militarily or via an eco-
nomic blockade. Id.
202. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 14; see also Diamond, supra note 77 (observing that [e]very
hamlet geared itself to a war economy: even young children declared themselves Biafran and
stood guard, shouldering wooden guns, at village cross-roads.).
198 [VOL. 48:165

tected . . . by any government based outside Eastern Nigeria)203 that,

properly considered, tie into a singular hard fact: Igbos and other Eas-
terners have certain inalienable rights which can best be preserved
only by an Eastern government.
The Nigerian government responded to the declaration of inde-
pendence with a war it started on July 6, 1967.204 General Gowon
billed the war as a surgical police action, something in the nature of
a blitzkrieg that will require only a few hours.205 In actuality, how-
ever, his government underestimated the depth of Igbo umbrage aris-
ing from the mass massacres and the Igbo will to resist, and the war
dragged on until January 15, 1970,206 1000 days after it started and 4
years after the first military coup in Nigeria.207 In resorting to force,
the Nigerian government acted contrary to the Aburi agreement that
forbade the use of force in resolving the dispute.208 It also ignored the
advice provided by some important outside entities that the use of
force could only result in avoidable estrangement and bitter-
ness . . .209 The Biafran War claimed the lives of about three million
203. OJUKWU, supra note 174, at 194.

204. See Ojukwu Exhorts His People (B.B.C. radio broadcast, July 20, 1967), in KIRK-
GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 148 (Two weeks ago at five oclock in the early hours of Thursday
July 6, Gowon and his Nigerian junta started the long-promised and awaited invasion of Biafra,
thrusting almost simultaneously at four different points . . . .); see also TOYIN FALOLA ET AL.,
THE MILITARY FACTOR IN NIGERIA 1966-1985 24 (1994).
206. See Lt.-Col. Effiong Announces Surrender of Biafra (Biafran Radio Broadcast, Jan 12,
1970), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 451-52; General Gowon Welcomes Bi-
afras Surrender (Radio Broadcast, Jan. 12, 1970) (Federal Ministry of Information Press Release
No. 31/1970), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 451-52.
207. KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 462. Detailed narrative on the military events con-
nected with the Biafran war is outside the scope of this Article. More-or-less objective accounts
of the conflict include: ZDENEK CERVENKA, THE NIGERIAN WAR 1967-1970 (1971); FREDERICK
FORSYTH, THE BIAFRA STORY (1969); and JOHN DE ST. JORRE, THE BROTHERS WAR: BIAFRA
AND NIGERIA (1972). Other accounts, of course, include Professor Kirk-Greenes two-volume
chronicle, KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, and KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, and STREMLAU,
THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICS OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR 1967-1970 (1977), which focuses
on the international politics of the war, see infra note 232, all of which are cited in this study.
Finally, a portion of ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 241-56, Professor
Isicheis book on Igbo history, appropriately titled The Uses of [Igbo] Autonomy, integrates
summary commentaries on the actual evolution of the war.
208. Gowon conceded that [i]t is true that at Aburi we all signed an undertaking not to use
force in an attempt to settle our present difficulties in the country, but that he was in honor
bound to defend the integrity of the country even if we have to use force. Gowons Private
Address to Heads of African Diplomatic Missions in Lagos, Mar. 1, 1967, reprinted in KIRK-
GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 372.
209. Statement on Arms Supplies by the Church of England (Aug. 18, 1967) (issued on be-
half of British Missionary Societies, Church Missionary Society, Church of Scotland Foreign Mis-
sion Committee, and the Methodist Missionary Society), in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at
152.
2004] 199
Howard Law Journal
Igbos,210 displaced or turned several millions into refugees,211 and

completely ruined a region which, before the war, was adjudged one
of the fastest growing economies in the world.212
b. Assessing Allegations of Genocide Regarding the Conduct of

the War
The conflict in Biafra was a civil war the Nigerian government
conducted in willful breach of the UN Geneva Convention on the
proper conduct of war. Although it makes little sense, war in and of
itself, even when bitterly fought, does not amount to a violation of
human rights, if it is conducted according to the international rules for
the humane conduct of war laid out in the Geneva Convention.213
Some of the diverse, vicious tactics the Nigerian side used to fight the
war included burying people alive; incessant, indiscriminate bombing
of open markets and other non-military targets; deliberate destruction
of houses, farms, livestock and other civilian properties; economic
blockades;214 and torture and other mistreatment of war prisoners.
International outcry against the excesses of Nigerian troops con-
cerning treatment of Biafran prisoners of war and civilians, including
protests by the International Red Cross, compelled the Nigeria gov-
ernment to draw a Code of Conduct for its soldiers.215
General Gowon strove to assure the world that the war was de-
signed only to quell a rebellion and not to destroy our people216
whereas his law enforcement personnel operated on the expressed be-
lief that the Igbos must be reduced considerably in number.217 An
International Observer Team unilaterally set up by Nigeria con-
ceded to allegations of treatment of Biafran prisoners of war in a
210. See Alexander A. Madiebo, Obasanjo, The Civil War, and Resource Control, VAN-
GUARD (Lagos), June 29, 2001. General Madiebo commanded the Biafran army during the war.
211. See OSAGHAE, supra note 87, at 69.
212. See id. at 172 (disclosing that the war left Igboland in ruins, with infrastructure and
utilities destroyed and severe shortages of shelter, food, clothing, and medicine).
213. The Geneva Conventions consist of international treaties dating back from 1864 and
amplified by numerous changes, some as recent as 1978, dealing with a multiplicity of topics,
including the treatment of civilians during war, humane treatment of prisoners of war, and treat-
ment rules relating to care of the wounded and sick. See GERHARD VON GLAHN, LAW AMONG
NATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW, chs. 22, 24, 25-26 (7th ed. 1996).
214. An estimated 2 million Igbo children suffered permanent intellectual retardation due to
malnourishment arising from the economic blockade against Biafra. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION,
supra note 100, at 24.
215. Id. at 22.
216. General Gowon, Address to 6th Assembly O.A.U. Heads of State (Sept. 6, 1969), in
KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 429.
200 [VOL. 48:165

manner inconsistent with the Geneva Convention, as well as some

evidence of the non-observation of the Convention.218 These and
other atrocities perpetrated by Nigerian troops were outside the le-
gitimate demands of combat and conquest.219 These savageries rein-
force the perception by some observers that the war was a
continuation by other means of the massacres of 1966.220 This was the
position of the UN International Committee in the Investigation of
Crimes of Genocide, which investigated the complaint of the Biafran
government that the conflict was a genocidal war meant to wipe out
Igbos. The Committee interviewed 1,082 people representing all of
the actors from the two sides to the civil war.221 Its finding, in the
words of its principal investigator, Dr. Mensah of Ghana, read: Fi-
nally I am of the opinion that in many of the cases cited to me hatred
of the Biafrans (mainly Igbos) and a wish to exterminate them was a
foremost motivational factor.222
Given the sheer scale of the number of Igbos killed, the civil war
would still arguably have been a genocidal war, even if the Nigerian
side had not adopted the illegal tactics it employed in conducting it.
The 3 million Igbos who perished in the war represented a third of the
Igbo population at the time.223 The Biafran war is ranked as the
bloodiest civil war of the twentieth century.224 As one perceptive
observer points out, [n]o Igbo family in the world escaped the imme-
diate or long-term impact and consequences of this holocaust.225
More people died in Biafra than the United States lost in all the con-
flicts it has fought in the course of its entire history, including the
American civil war (1861-65).226

219. Id. at 18.
220. Id. at 18; see also Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Obasanjos Obsession with Biafra Versus Facts of
History, US AFRICA ONLINE, available at http://www.usafricaonline.com/ekweekwe.biafra.html
(last visited July 8, 2004) (contending that the Biafra conflict was a war the Nigerian government
and its allies waged to overwhelm and destroy the corporate ability of the Igbo people to resist
an aggression triggered by the horrific massacres).
221. See OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 23 (discussing an investigation of the
International Committee in the Investigations of Crimes of Genocide).
222. Id. at 23.
223. Ekwe-Ekwe, supra note 220.
224. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at vii; see also KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at
462. (calling the war the biggest, best-weaponed, and bloodiest war in the whole history of
Black Africa).
226. For the statistics of U.S. war casualties, see Patrick T. Reardon, As Bodies Pile Up,
Support Can Slip, CHI. TRIB., Mar. 30, 2003, at 8. For a description of the casualities in Biafra,
see OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 1-23.
2004] 201
Howard Law Journal
One Swedish nobleman, touched by the scale of Igbo suffering,

stated, it would take the world fifty years, at least, to understand
what happened.227 The loss easily surpassed the 3 million deaths
inflicted on the Congo in the nineteenth century by King Leopold of
Belgium whose troops ravaged Central Africa searching for ivory and
diamonds.228 Some military commanders who observed the ruthless
destruction that Nigerian troops visited on Biafra believe that a for-
eign occupying force would have shown more sympathy than these
troops did.229 References have been made to abuses Biafran forces
were alleged to have committed during their brief occupation of the
Midwest. Any abuses that might have occurred, however, were reac-
tions in the ordinary course of the resistance of brutal aggression; they
could never compare to the genocidal proportions of the Nigerian side
and, therefore, could not minimize federal atrocities.
Not all Nigerians took part in violating Igbo human rights and
some, such as the playwright Wole Soyinka, who called for a cease-fire
in the war, actually endured incarceration for their pro-Biafra senti-
ments.230 However, part of the tragedy of the war over Biafra was
the dire paucity of dissenters within Nigerian society to temper the
wanton war tactics of the Nigerian federal government and stem the
scale of Igbo killings.231
227. EZENWA-OHAETO, supra note 152, at 153 (quoting When von Rosen, a Swedish Count).
228. See generally ADAM HOCHSCHILD, KING LEOPOLDS GHOST (1999). As tragic as it still
is, the Belgium genocide encompassed peoples from a multiplicity of nations that today form the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African
Republic, and Angola, whereas the loss from the Biafran war weighed heavily on one single
nation, the Igbos. Ekwe-Ekwe, supra note 220. With about 700 people per square kilometer in
some places, Igboland ranks among the most densely populated land areas in the whole of Af-
rica next only to the Nile Valley. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 5. So the war was
waged in its totality in a very confined expanse of territory, where the victims did not have access
to a neutral or friendly contiguous state for refuge or succor. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 14.
Biafra was an island surrounded by a sea of hostile neighbors, including the Cameroons, which
was strongly pro-Nigeria. Ekwe-Ekwe, supra note 220.
229. See, for example, this account documented by a Scottish newspaper in Dec. 1967 where
Nigerian soldiers had two young men in civilian dress the soldiers suspected to be Igbos appear
before them.
The young lads looked like secondary school students. With the Northern soldiers was
an Efik-speaking soldier. It was his duty to question prisoners [i]n the Efik language.
His job was to see if any spoke Efik with an Ibo accent. These two young lads did. The
soldiers took aim and they were shot on the spot.
OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 19.
230. See generally WOLE SOYINKA, THE MAN DIED: PRISON NOTES OF WOLE SOYINKA
(1972).
231. What Professor Soyinka did was so otherworldly at the time that some foreign analysts
mistook him for Igbo. See OBrien, supra note 104, at 17, n.1 (mistakenly but nonetheless signif-
icantly, calling the world-class playwright Igbo, even though Soyinka is Yoruba).
202 [VOL. 48:165

c. The Role of Major Powers in the Defeat of Biafra
The support that major powers gave to Nigeria was a critical fac-
tor in the defeat of Biafra.
These powers include Britain and the Soviet Union whose gov-
ernments supplied arms to the Nigerian regime. Egypt and East Ger-
many, then Soviet allies, served as proxies for the Russians, supplying
pilots who helped Nigerian troops bomb civilian targets in Biafra.
France had sympathy for Biafra but extended no formal diplomatic
recognition. Also, French arms given to the embattled Ojukwu re-
gime, funneled indirectly through French allies in West Africa, never
amounted to anything more than a trickle.
The U.S. government stayed away from taking any side in the
dispute, citing its ongoing entanglement in Vietnam and its deference
to Britain as the former colonial overlord of Nigeria.232 Ironically,
the major foreign powers that supported Nigeria were moved by a
complex set of economic calculations, and a realistic assessment of
who was likely to win,233 not by any Biafran argument of self-deter-
mination. They maintained their support for Nigeria in the face of
overwhelming sympathy for Igbos within their very populations.234
For all the efforts of the U.S. government to distance itself from
the dispute, Biafra, somewhat like Vietnam, turned out to be an issue
that divided American politicians.235 Some of the strongest Western
advocates for Biafra during the war were U.S. politicians. These top
politicians included Mr. Richard Nixon, who, as a presidential candi-
date in 1968, lambasted the American government concerning its
wringing of hands about what is going on in Biafra.236 President
Nixon lamented, [t]he destruction of an entire people is an immoral
232. For extensive analysis of the role of these and other foreign powers in the conflict, see
generally STREMLAU, supra note 207.
234. In both France and the United States, individuals took their own lives in protest of the
killings of Igbos and in protest of their governments support for Nigeria. See, e.g., OJUKWU,
supra note 174, at 387; see also ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 247
(disclosing that the Igbo case won sympathizers all over the world).
235. In addition to Richard Nixon, see President Richard M. Nixon, Call for American Ac-
tion on Biafra (Markpress Release no. Gen. 300), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170,
at 334-35 [hereinafter Nixon, Call for Action], and Eugene McCarthy, see infra notes 238-48,
George Wallace also took a position in the war but in favor of Nigeria and against the Igbos, see
supra note 97. Also before his death, the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also
privately volunteered his services as mediator in the war. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 87.
236. Nixon, Call for Action, supra note 235, at 334-35.
2004] 203
Howard Law Journal
objective, even in the most moral of wars. It can never be justified; it

can never be condoned.237
But by far the most outstanding of these American politicians
was Senator Eugene McCarthy who in a speech to Congress on May
16, 1969, lambasted the bankruptcy of American policy of one Ni-
geriaat any cost,238 that has resulted in our accepting the deaths
of a million people as the price for preserving a nation that never ex-
isted.239 Senator McCarthy believed Biafra ha[d] demonstrated
that it represents the interest of its people.240 Therefore, Senator
McCarthy advised the U.S. government to support the embattled re-
publics right to a separate national existence, extend diplomatic rec-
ognition, help de-escalate great-power involvement in the conflict,
promote negotiations to resolve the conflict, and assist in humanita-
rian relief for its suffering people.241 He disagreed with the position
that American recognition of Biafra would constitute intervention
into African affairs, stating that non-recognition is also intervention
and that, at any rate, the U.S. government had already, in various
ways, repeatedly effectively intervened in Nigerian affairs.242 Some
examples included backing the Nigerian government after it abro-
gated the Aburi agreements and by exerting pressure on a number of
African countries not to recognize Biafra. Senator McCarthy believed
that sacrifice of several million people to defend the boundaries of
Nigeria imposed artificially by a colonial power was too high a price
to pay for national unity.243 The U.S. Senator lamented, [a] strategy
of siege designed to produce military victory that has instead pro-
duced massive starvation unparalleled in modern warfare.244 Taking
his audience through the entire history of the country and of the
Biafran conflict, he noted that the Gowon government unilaterally ab-
rogated the agreement reached at Aburi for a confederated union that
could have resolved the conflict.245 He dismissed the twelve-state sys-
tem General Gowon announced in place of a confederation which he
237. Id. at 335.

238. McCarthy, Speech, supra note 194, at 403.
239. Id. at 401.
240. Id. at 405.
241. Id. at 403.
242. Id. at 405.
243. Id. at 401.
244. Id. at 402.
245. Id.
204 [VOL. 48:165

saw as a device put in place to hurt the Igbos deliberately.246 Senator

McCarthy foresaw mistreatment of Igbos, building on the state crea-
tion exercise that would take place after the war.
The one Nigeria of the future would have to be postulated upon
the inequality of different tribes. The Ibos and other eastern tribes
who cooperated in forming Biafra would be stigmatized and penal-
ized in many ways. The Ibos would . . . be confined to a crowded,
infertile region smaller than their ancestral homeland, with no ac-
cess to the sea. They would be deprived of all but token participa-
tion in the reconstituted unitary state. At a recent planning
conference in Nigeria, it was declared that it would be [twenty-five]
years before Ibos can be given positions in Nigeria.247
Senator McCarthy addressed possible objections against an inde-
pendent Biafra and dismissed them one after the other.248 It was not
without good reason that, as Professor Kirk-Greene noted, the U.S.
Senators presentation sent a shiver down the [Nigerian] Federal
spine.249
d. Key Lessons the War Held for Nigeria
One Nigerian historian opined that the civil war confirmed the
futility and inadequacy of secession as the solution to attendant
246. It was particularly designed to confine the Ibos to a small area and to break their
influence, id. at 402, and it would confine Ibos to a crowded, infertile region smaller than their
ancestral homeland, with no access to the sea. Id. at 403.
247. Id. at 405.
248. These include the objections of (1) economic viability, and (2) possible Igbo domination
of minorities. With respect to the first, the Senator argued that eliminating the hostility gener-
ated by an artificial political union could release energy for economic development. Certainly
the technical ingenuity of the Easterners will be stimulated by the independence of Biafra. Id.
at 404. Also, he said, independence does not preclude economic association, pointing up the
willingness of Biafrans to co-operate with Nigeria on vital problems of transportation and com-
munication, particularly the use of the Niger River. Id. (referring to a blueprint on future
association with the rump of Nigeria the Biafran government released in a Biafran Memoran-
dum on Proposed Future Association (Aug. 29, 1967). The text of the memorandum is con-
tained in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 163-65). But in fact, he said, [a]lmost any
advantage that can accrue from one Nigeria can also be achieved by regional economic ar-
rangements such as a common market and a regional development board for redistributing reve-
nues. McCarthy, Speech, supra note 194, at 404. But assuming not, it is clear that Nigeria is
viable without the eastern region, given its great resources, and the fact that it has been able
to forego eastern oil revenues for [two] years while fighting a costly war, among other reasons.
Id. Turning to objection number two, he said the national preference of the minority tribes is a
question which can be settled through plebiscites supervised by the United Nations or the Or-
ganization of African Unity. Id. But [e]ven without some minority tribes, Biafra would be a
populous country by African standards, larger than three-fourths of the African countries. Only
[ten] of some [forty] African countries would be larger. Id.
2004] 205
Howard Law Journal
problems of post-colonial federalism in Nigeria250 without indicating

what technique would have been adequate as a solution. Such blam-
ing of secession is an unsophisticated understanding that overlooks
a multiplicity of factors. For one thing, Nigeria achieved indepen-
dence as a federation rather than a nation, with as yet little substance
to the . . . label of Nigerian and with future hope rather than present
truth of indissoluble personhood.251
For another, the conflict was a culmination of numerous crises
and contradictions, going back into the colonial past, that buffeted the
country, including, to illustrate with events in the post-independence
period, the persistent troubles and violence in the Western Region,
controversies over the accuracy of census figures, a devastating work-
ers general strike in June 1964, and a dispute over the rigging and
other electoral irregularities that characterized the conduct of the
1964 general elections.252 Third, as one important study on this topic
counsels, the Igbo declaration of independence must be judged
250. FALOLA ET AL., supra note 204, at 30. For a contrarian position, see Beko Ransome-
Kuti, who, in a survey of Nigerian history in which he touched on the fate of Igbos in the after-
math of the massacres, stated that our collective experience since 1960 leaves no one in any
doubt that the decision to secede by the Igbo was proper and correct, adding:
You cannot kill tens of thousands of a people, take over the government with arms and
expect them to stay around like sitting ducks especially after unilaterally abrogating a
negotiated settlement. The principle of self-determination is now so well established in
international law that instead of issues degenerating into civil war, this is an option that
has to be held in front of us at all times.
Beko Ransome-Kuti, Vision for New Nigeria, THENEWS, Dec. 20, 1999, at 48. He inveighed
against Nigerias 1999 Constitution, which was written for the country by the departing military
without citizen input or participation. The pre-amble of the Constitution declared: We the
people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria having firmly and solemnly resolved to live in unity
and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble Sovereign Nation . . . do hereby make, enact
and give to ourselves the following constitution. Id. at 49. He calls the preamble a lie designed
to foreclose the right to self-determination, adding that:
The people of Nigeria never sat or met anywhere, not to talk of solemnly agreeing to
anything. As a matter of fact some sections of the country have been through such
degrading and painful times in Nigeria that they might well prefer to live alone or join a
more viable and conducive enterprise rather than continue with the present
arrangement.
Id. Part of those some sections of the country Ransome-Kuti refers to in his essay are Igbos.
251. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 12; see also McCarthy, Speech, supra note 194, at 401
(calling Nigeria a nation that never existed).
252. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 15-23; Larry Diamond, Nigeria: The Uncivic Soci-
ety and the Descent into Praetorianism, in POLITICS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: COMPARING
EXPERIENCES WITH DEMOCRACY 424-27 (Larry Diamond et al. eds., 1995) [hereinafter POLITICS
IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES]. For an understanding going back into the colonial formation of
the country, see LEE C. BUCHHEIT, SECESSION: THE LEGITIMACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 164
(1978) (conveying that [t]he events constituting the proximate cause of the Ibo separation were
very much a product of the ethnic hostilities that had blighted Nigerian political development all
along); OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 9 (portraying the civil war as a culmination
of the forces of ethnic particularism, which had been artificially repressed during the colonial
regime).
206 [VOL. 48:165

against the background of a history of volatile inter-group rivalry and

conflict, in which . . . the threat of disassociation was a commonplace
instrument of political coercion.253 Particularly,
the common currency of secessionist talk in all of the Nigerian re-
gions right up to the actual separation of the East in 1967 gave the
Biafrans a reasonable ground for believing that secession was recog-
nized in Nigeria as a legitimate method of altering one regions rela-
tionship to the others, or at least that it would not be strenuously
opposed.254
Igbos were certainly justified in thinking that some rearrangement of
the political structure toward a looser union of the regions was in or-
der when the head of the federal government, General Gowon, pub-
licly expressed his belief that the basis for unity is not there.255
Although unsuccessful, the secession was a legitimate act of self-
determination by the Biafran people.256 There is no stronger evidence
to support Igbo overwhelming desire for independence than their
willingness to endure nearly three years of civil war, disease, and fam-
ine to achieve that independence.257 Few perceptive observers can
miss the tragic irony of the Biafran war. President Nyerere of
Tanzania noted that Nigeria started a war to crush the Biafrans in
their own home.258 Another analyst reflected that Igbos proudly
called themselves Nigerian nationalists at a time when there was no
Nigerian nation and when no other group thought in these terms.
Now that they have in very truth formed a nation on their own soil
under the pressures of history they are in the gravest danger of being
put to death in the name of the nation which they once invented.259
Much more basically, as one group of British citizens poignantly
pointed out, having seen her people driven out by the rest of Nigeria
and hunted back to their homeland, [Igbos] found Nigeria at war with
253. BUCHHEIT, supra note 252, at 164.

254. Id. at 174.
255. Id.
256. See id. at 173-76.
257. Id. at 174.
258. See generally Tanzania Recognizes Biafra, supra note 192; President Julius Nyerere,
Why We Recognized Biafra (printed in OBSERVER, Apr. 28, 1968, and L.A. TIMES, May 5, 1968),
reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 211-13. Nyerere insisted every people must
have some place in the world where they are not liable to be rejected by their fellow citizens.
Id. at 211. For similar positions, see Statement on British Arms Supplies from Biafran Students in
U.K., reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 150-51, and Biafra Sees Itself as David,
reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 171-72.
2004] 207
Howard Law Journal
her to preserve the integrity of a Federation where her people could

no longer live.260
Commentators who take the posture that might is right fail to
realize that it is morally unjustified to use coercion to suppress a cam-
paign for self-determination,261 as the Nigerian government did, espe-
cially one like the Biafrans that was driven by an overwhelming
desire for independence.262 Also, as recent events have proven,
force only temporarily suppresses the burning desire of an oppressed
people to self-determine their political destiny; it does not kill it.263
The secession and attendant civil war underscored the fact that
blatant violation of the individual and collective human rights of any
group can have far-reaching consequences for the geographical integ-
rity of a country.264 The war taught Nigeria that they cannot hurt
[Igbos] with impunity,265 and that Igbos, like other injured peoples
throughout history, will resort to arms in their self-defense where
peaceful negotiations fail.266 The civil war was a major developmen-
tal setback for Nigeria; some, like Professor Mazrui, rank the catastro-
phe as a factor preventing the country from living up to its full
potential as a leader in Africa.267 But the real setback was the failure
of post-war Nigerian leaders to use the opportunity the conflict af-
forded to secure the peace and lay a solid foundation for a pros-
perous future for all its citizens, Igbos as well as non-Igbos.268
260. Elbert et al., supra note 91, at n.6 (Stanley Diamond replying to responses to his book
review, Diamond, supra note 77).
261. See generally ALLEN BUCHANAN, SECESSION: THE MORALITY OF POLITICAL DIVORCE
FROM FORT SUMTER TO LITHUANIA AND QUEBEC 27-28 (1991) for an elaboration of this argu-
ment around which the book itself revolves.
263. See infra Part VII(A)(5).
264. Ransome-Kuti, supra note 250, at 48 (You cannot kill tens of thousands of a people,
take over the government with arms and expect them to stay around like sitting ducks, especially
after unilaterally abrogating a negotiated settlement.).
265. Ojukwu Exhorts His People, supra note 204, at 149 (the Biafran leaders broadcast to his
new nation before the war).
266. Lt.-Col. Effiong Announces Surrender, supra note 206, at 451 (surrender statement of
General Philip Effiong).
267. See Ali A. Mazrui, The Bondage of Boundaries, ECONOMIST, Sept. 11, 1993, at 28.
268. Awolowo, Blueprint for Post-War Reconstruction (1967), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2,
supra note 170, at 178, 181 [hereinafter Awolowo, Blueprint]; see also John M. Mbaku, Constitu-
tionalism and the Transition to Democratic Governance in Africa, in THE TRANSITION TO DEMO-
CRATIC GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA: THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE 103, 112 (John Mukum Mbaku
& Julius Omozuanvbo Ihonvbere eds., 2003) [hereinafter TRANSITION TO DEMOCRATIC GOV-
ERNANCE IN AFRICA] (indicating that the civil war afforded Nigeria an opportunity it, unfortu-
nately, failed to seize, to reconstruct its system for the benefit of all groups). Scholars like
Professor Kirk-Greene advised Nigerian leaders to draw a proper lesson for Africa from the
dark fratricidal days of 1966-70 by remembering the civil war not as the Biafran War but as
208 [VOL. 48:165

[O]ne of the greatest betrayals of modern times, as Professor

Achebe lamented, is the missed opportunity to turn Nigeria into one
of the great nations of Africa, perhaps the leading Black nation.269
C. The Post-Civil War Period to the Present: Negation of the Post-

War Reconstruction Program and Violations Through
Marginalization
1. Negation of the Post-War Reconstruction Program
The Nigerian national government unveiled a number of policies
after the war designed supposedly to integrate Igbos back into Nigeria
as full citizens and to rebuild infrastructure in Igbo territories dam-
aged during the war.270 The government did not pursue any of these
policies with any sincerity.271 Worse yet, some of the atrocities that
took place in the prior era continued in this new era. These abuses
include widespread killings of unarmed Igbo civilians by Nigerian
soldiers.272 Unarmed Igbo civilians killed within this period included
the distinguished political scientist Dr. Kalu Ezera.273
The government also effectively continued its starvation policy of
the war years by blocking assistance to Igbos from foreign countries
and humanitarian organizations that it perceived to have sided with
Biafra during the war.274 About a quarter of a million Igbo children
an inclusive War [for] National Unity that does not end with the military conquest of Igbos.
KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 475. There is small indication that the Nigerian leadership,
committed as they have been since the wars end to containing Igbos, followed the advice.
269. See EZENWA-OHAETO, supra note 152, at 240 (quoting Chinua Achebe). Professor
Achebe maintains that Nigeria as a nation has not been founded. Id. at 237. He argues that any
individual who will correct some of the many ills recounted in his book on the trouble with
Nigeria will be the person whom posterity will come to recognize as the founder of the Nigerian
nation. Id. But it is difficult, hes going to rise beyond all that we know today, to be possessed
by this vision of Nigeria as a modern state in the twenty-first century. He cant be mucking
around with tribalism, with petty religious arguments. Id.
270. See, e.g., General Gowons Victory Message to the Nation, The Dawn of National Rec-
onciliation (Radio Broadcast, Jan. 15, 1970) (Nigerian House Press Release, Jan. 19, 1970), in
KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 457, 458 (including that [t]here is no question of second[-
]class citizenship in Nigeria.); see also OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 26 (referring
to the reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction or triple R policy).
271. The reason the national government gave for not carrying out promised reconstruction
in Igbo areas was lack of money. But that was a lame excuse, given that this was the very height
of the oil boom when the government was spending money lavishly on foreign aid and prestigi-
ous projects, like global cultural festivals, with little economic value for the country. OHA-NA-
EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 29.
273. Id.
274. See id. By the end of January 1970, only 80 distribution centers remained out of the
3,000 that existed in Biafra before the surrender; this was far short of the 9,000 estimated as
2004] 209
Howard Law Journal
died as a result of this post-war starvation policy.275 New tactics in

Igbo deprivations were also introduced into the mix. One of these
was an attempt to destroy education in Igboland. It was a measure
implemented, more or less silently, through a variety of means, includ-
ing neglect of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, an important symbol
of Igbo higher education and a major factor in the evolution of
Biafran resistance during the war; stifling or decimating, rather than
nurturing, Igbo war-time technological accomplishments;276 govern-
ment take-over of missionary and other private schools; as well as a
ban on private ownership of schools in Igbo areas.
A policy that illustrates these new tactics as well as puts this new
era into perspective is the ban on private ownership of schools. East
Central State, the lone state to which Igboland was reduced,277 was
the only state in the country with this policy. The excuse the govern-
ment gave for taking over private schools was to combat sectional-
ism, religious conflicts, and disloyalty to the cause of a united
Nigeria,278 as well as to promote the efficacy, order, stability, and
good government of the [Igbo] state in its relationship with the other
states of the Federation.279
However, the real excuse for the takeover was, as Professor Dia-
mond stated, to destroy the Ibo sense of nationality, deprive them of
their history, and control both the definition of education and the uses
to which it can be put.280 To ensure that the new policy has teeth, the
takeover law adopted a broad-based definition of school. It defined
a school as a group of ten persons or more assembled for the purpose
of receiving regular instruction in a form of education of whatever
kind.281 The enforcement of the law led to sadly ridiculous occur-
rences where even typing schools were closed down and their proprie-
tors subjected to legal sanction on the ground that they operated
illegal institutions. A net effect of the takeover edict was a decline
necessary to reach the population adequately at that time. See Elbert et al., supra note 91 (Stan-
ley Diamond replying to responses to his book review, Diamond, supra note 77).
276. Id. at 27 (illustrating with ogbunigwe or remote-control bombs Biafrans invented during
the war).
277. See discussion supra notes 89, 194 and accompanying text.
278. Stanley Diamond, The Ibos Plight, N.Y. REV. BOOKS, Feb. 24, 1972 (citing the then-
East Central States Public Education Edict).
279. Id.
280. Id. It should have occurred to the government, Professor Diamond reasoned, that mod-
ern schools were, above all, local institutions, whether established by missions, private persons,
or local government councils. Id.
281. Id. (citing the Public Education Edict).
210 [VOL. 48:165

in the number of schools in Igboland from 290 before the war to only
190 in 1972.282
To appreciate the weight of the oppression the governments no
private school policy imposed on Igbo education after the war, one
needs to understand the critical role education plays in Igbo world
view:283 The school, in the modern era, became the major vehicle for
Ibo prestige, individuality, and self-development.284 The attack on
Igbo education was more broad-based than imagined and extended to
curtailment of cultural exchanges with foreign countries. For exam-
ple, the U.S. Embassy was not allowed to reopen its library in
Enugu.285 It also included acts like the proscription of the Igbo State
Union,286 established in 1948, which for many years played the role of
vanguard in the promotion of Igbo education. Finally, it also was not
something limited to only the Gowon regime, but rather a policy dili-
gently pursued by subsequent governments. Thus, during his period
in office as military head of state from 1976 to 1979, General
Obasanjo established six polytechnics (technically-oriented tertiary in-
stitutions) in various parts of the country, none of which were sited in
Igboland.287
In its petition to the Oputa Panel, the Igbo cultural organization
Oha-na-eze requested reparation for the educational institutions and
other civilian targets the Nigerian government bombed during the
war, as well as money to complete the reconstruction of the University
of Nigeria, Nsukka, and its entire library, which was destroyed during
the civil war.288 In sum, rather than pursue reconstruction of infra-
structure damaged during the war it had promised to undertake, the
government strove hard to destroy Igbo education.
Other tactics which characterize the period include:
release of a law denying reabsorption into the army, prisons, and
police, for thousands of Igbo officers.289 More than 4,000 Igbo
282. Id.
284. Diamond, supra note 278; see also discussion supra notes 79-80 and accompanying text.
285. Diamond, supra note 278.
286. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 108.
288. Id. at 24-25.
289. The law in question was the Public Officers (Special Provisions) Decree No. 46 of 1970.
Id. at 27.
2004] 211
Howard Law Journal
public servants in the police alone lost their jobs as a result of this
law.290
declaring property and investments Igbos left behind in Port Har-
court and other Nigerian cities during the war abandoned prop-
erty.291 General Gowons government did not attempt to
address the problem, and subsequent ones that tried did so half-
heartedly and unsuccessfully.292 For example, the Muhammed-
Obasanjo government (1975-1976) compulsorily and unconstitu-
tionally acquired some of the property without adequate compen-
sation to their owners.293
introducing a fraudulent banking policy that paid every Igbo who
had a bank account before the war a level 20 regardless of the
amount or size of their actual savings. (Given that the Nigerian
government, which won the war, viewed the period from May 30,
1967 to January 15, 1970, during which the Republic of Biafra
existed, as illegal, an equitable resolution of the situation, which
the government could have used but failed to use, would have
been to restore all bank accounts to their balances as of May 29,
1967, the date before Biafra came into existence.294) The policy
pauperized the few people of the Igbo middle class who survived
the war.295
enacting a business indigenization law precisely at a time when
Igbos were still reeling from the effects of the war.296 The timing
of the law ensured the effective exclusion of Igbos, who lacked
the financial muscle to participate, from ownership in Nigerias
industrial sector.297 (The indigenization policy effectively com-
pleted the routing of the Igbo from the commanding heights of
the Nigerian economy[,] from where the banking policy
stopped.298) It turned Igbos from the economic juggernauts they
were before the civil war, to the street traders they have become
today, and is responsible for the skepticism Igbos individually and
290. Id. Notice that Decree No. 46 ran directly counter to the blueprint for post-war recon-
struction, designed perhaps to persuade Igbos to give up rebellion, that the government re-
leased during the war. See discussion infra note 303-04 and accompanying text.
291. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 28-29.
292. Port Harcourt, a city in Eastern Nigeria came over time to exemplify the abandoned
property issue. What makes this matter so hurtful for Igbos was that Port Harcourt was a city
founded and developed by Igbos.
295. See ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 46 .
296. The law in question was the Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1974.
298. ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 46.
212 [VOL. 48:165

as a group have till this day concerning so-called privatization

in the country.299
using so-called boundary adjustment exercises, such as the one
the Olusegun Obasanjo government conducted in 1976, to excise
mineral-rich areas of Igboland and transfer those areas to non-
Igbo areas.300
Individually and collectively these tactics took the appearance of
a continuation of the supposedly ended war by other means, or stealth
war. In its effort and determination to destroy Igbo spirit and elan in
the aftermath of the war, no means seemed too small for the Nigerian
government. To deny Igbo petty traders struggling to recover from
the war a means of livelihood, the national government even imposed
a ban on the importation of used clothing and stockfish.301
2. Nature and Indicators of Igbo Marginalization

The term that has evolved in the latter post-war period to de-
scribe the deliberate exclusion of Igbos from the mainstream of Niger-
ian life is marginalization. It is a policy by the Nigerian government,
deployed to exclude and contain Igbos, using every imaginable means.
Marginalization is an illegal practice that violates the Federal Charac-
ter Doctrine.302 It is also a practice that negates the Nigerian govern-
ments well-publicized blueprint for post-war reconstruction released
during the war, which committed the government to several courses of
action, among them a promise that [t]he surviving victims of past dis-
turbances and of the present military operations shall be cared for
299. See Pat Utomi, Minority Question and the Common Good (2), GUARDIAN (Lagos),
Nov. 2, 1999.
301. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 29-30. Second-hand clothing is more eco-
nomically affordable for a people recovering from a devastating war. Dried stockfish, which is
rich in protein, is a known Igbo delicacy of choice.
302. One of the important innovations of the countrys Second Republic constitutionalism
(1979-83), this doctrine, in pertinent part, provides:
The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the
conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal
character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command
national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from
a few States or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in
any of its agencies.
NIG. CONST. 14 (3). Put differently, to give every ethnic group within the country a sense of
belonging and to promote national loyalty, the doctrine requires that the distribution of appoint-
ments, contracts, educational opportunities, or other federal benefitswhat Nigerians colloqui-
ally dub federal presencereflect the countrys federal character, and not benefit any one
group at the expense of others. No Nigerian leader has applied this principle consistently, not
even General Obasanjo, under whose first government the doctrine was written into the
Constitution.
2004] 213
Howard Law Journal
with the utmost compassion and [a]ll soldiers, no matter on which

side they had fought, shall be rehabilitated and gainfully employed at
the end of the military operations.303 Under this same blueprint for
post-war reconstruction, the Nigerian national government promised
not only to win these military operations, but alsoand this is by
far more importantto secure the peace, which will follow, by guar-
anteeing political equality and social justice to all Nigerian citizens,
irrespective of their state of origin, ethnic affiliation, religion, social
status, or the side on which they had fought during the rebellion. It
is above all resolved to lay a sound foundation for a prosperous
future for our country and our people.304
Indicators of Igbo marginalization are legion and include, but are
by no means limited to, the following:
Insufficient representation of Igbos in federal governing and pol-
icy-making institutions.
Blocking Igbos from aspiring to the Nigerian presidency.
Deliberate exclusion of Igbos as heads of supposedly sensitive
governmental departments, such as the Ministry of Defense and
Ministry of Internal Affairs, and from appointment to key ambas-
sadorial postings such as the U.S., Britain, Japan, Germany, and
France.
The lack of federal investments in roads, industries, power supply,
communication technologies, water supply, and other items of
federal presence in Igbo areas. (For example, Igboland does
not have one international airport even though Igbos are the
most widely traveled people in Nigeria. In contrast, northern Ni-
geria has international airports in abundance even when they
have no need for them.)305
Disgracing Igbo army officers before they reached the rank of
general or retiring them with ignominy; removing Igbo army of-
ficers from pure military locations (signal, armored battalion,
mechanized division) once they reach the rank of lieutenant-colo-
nel or colonel; assigning Igbo army officers to branches of the
army where they cannot command troops; and having junior
army officers from privileged ethnic groups determine where se-
nior Igbo army officers are to be posted or transferred.
Permanent military occupation of Igboland
Discrimination against Igbo states in revenue allocation.
Non-maintenance and neglect of Igbo highways and roads.
303. Awolowo, Blueprint, supra note 268, at 179.

304. Id. at 181.
214 [VOL. 48:165

Failure of Nigerian law enforcement authorities to protect Igbo

lives from being made targets of violence by northern Islamic
fundamentalists.
Improper application of the federal character doctrine with re-
spect to Igbos, including the use of the quota system to deprive
Igbo children of places in federal educational institutions.
Denying Igbos the right to organize or banning Igbo organiza-
tions for the flimsiest reasons.
Closing Igbo businesses on the slightest excuse.
Hurting Igbo businesses by banning the importation of certain
goods, including used clothing, stockfish, and used cars.
Disfavoring Igbos in the creation of states and local governments.
Although comprising about a quarter of the Nigerian population,
Igbos have only 5 states compared to 6 for the other zones and
seven for the Hausa-Fulani Northwest. It also has 94 local gov-
ernments, the lowest among the 6 zones in the country.
Organizing police commands in the country such that police posts
in the Igbo states are made to report to neighboring police com-
mands outside the Igbo states.
Unprovoked attacks on Igbo property and molestation of Igbo
entrepreneurs without compensation for the destroyed business
or punishment of offenders who perpetrate these acts.
Differential taxes against Igbo businesses in many northern states
in the country.
Marginalization calls forth another chapter in the unending iro-
nies that have come to characterize the Nigerian governments rela-
tionship with Igbos: A Nigerian central government that fought hard
during the war to make Igbos part of Nigeria has fought equally hard
in peace time to both exclude them from top echelons of govern-
ance in Nigeria and to systematically disempower[ ] them in all
spheres of national life.306 Every post-war Nigerian government,
military and civilian alike, has engaged in marginalization of Igbos.
Occupation of the vice-presidency, the number two position in the
land from 1979 to 1983, by an Igbo, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, temporarily
halted Igbo marginalization but did not have any sustained ameliora-
tive effect.307 Some have characterized Dr. Ekwuemes vice presi-
306. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 9; see also IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 104.
307. Professors Achebes book on Nigeria whose topics include an analysis of the Igbo
problem, highlighted details of Igbo discrimination in the siting of federal industries that took
place while Dr. Ekwueme was in office. Achebe wrote concerning the Ajaokuta Steel Project
the Russians were building for the country: Many have tried to ask but nobody has quite suc-
ceeded in explaining away the siting of five steel mills worth 4.5 billion naira on final completion
with estimated employment capacity of 100,000 by 1990, only in the North and West of the
2004] 215
Howard Law Journal
dency as a mere academic exercise for the East,308 but I disagree

with the assessment.
The office has important symbolic value, but in a U.S.-type presi-
dential system of government such as the one Nigeria operated then,
it lacked real substantive power since the vice president has only the
powers that the president allows him.
Although all Nigerian governments since the civil war have
marginalized Igbos, some have engaged in the act more than others.
Such was the degree of exclusion during the Sani Abacha regime
(1993-1998), that Gani Fawehinmi, a Yoruba lawyer and progressive
social crusader, took the government to court. Fawehinmis prayer
was for more Igbos to be appointed into the Provisional Ruling Coun-
cil, the military governments executive policy-making body.309
Fawehinmis efforts did not succeed.
Representation improved during the civilian era between 1979 to
1983, even to the point that some hypothesized that democratic gov-
ernments hold the best chance for Igbo rehabilitation and de-
marginalization in Nigerian politics.310 Opportunities for civilian gov-
ernment have been limited to begin with in Nigeria, however, and ci-
vilian government under General Obasanjo since 1999 has shown that
the democratic character of a Nigerian government has no amelio-
rative effect on Igbo marginalization. Part of the politics of
marginalization in Nigeria today is that non-Igbo ethnic groups, in-
cluding Hausa-Fulanis who have long dominated national politics, also
country. ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 49-50. The exclusion of the East in the project took place
notwithstanding the fact that feasibility studies showed that Igboland satisfies the raw material,
transportation, market, and other requirements for the successful establishment of this and
other industries. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 44. Specifically, as Dr. Ekwueme
himself conveyed, the Russian Technical Partners recommended in a paper he was privileged, as
vice president, to see, that for Nigerias steel project to be viable, it must be sited in Onitsha.
IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 27. The national government rejected the recommendation, prefer-
ring, as Ekwueme says, to start a new township and provide virtually everything to make the
project take off rather than use Onitsha where all the facilities for takeoff already exist. Id.
309. Id. at 104.
310. See id. at 64 (Igbos come very near to power during civilian government than in mili-
tary government.); see also OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 9 (suggesting that the
civilian government in office from 1979 to 1983 tried to reverse Igbo exclusion from executive
authority by giving due regard to federal character in the distribution of offices but was over-
thrown in time before any change took root).
216 [VOL. 48:165

claim to be marginalized.311 As the following passage explains, how-

ever, Igbo marginalization is qualitatively different:
Igbo marginalization is a cumulative one of a kind no other ethnic
group in the country suffers and therefore deserving of urgent alle-
viation in a regime, especially a democratic one, committed to eq-
uity and social justice. The East was the theater of the Biafra war
whose scars still remain because . . . the planned reconstruction
never happened. Also, some of the ethnic groups in the oil-produc-
ing area, such as the Etches and Ikwerre in the Niger Delta are
Igbos. In short, Igbos bear a double burden of neglect the result of
being an oil-producing area and the location of Igboland as a thea-
ter of a brutal war whose effects to date still linger. A factor that
reinforces the rankle and sense of injury arising from this marginal-
ization is that the wealth of the nation, since the birth of the country
controlled by non-Easterners, comes from the East.312
3. Evaluating the Argument of Igbo Self-Marginalization
Some observers such as Igbokwe have canvassed the concept of

Igbo self-marginalization.313 However, the concept is one that I find
problematic. I am persuaded by, and find instructive, the distinction
Oha-na-eze made between marginality and marginalization.314 Mar-
ginality is [t]he relative or absolute lack of power to influence a de-
fined social entity while being a recipient of the exercise of power by
other parts of that entity.315 Marginalization, on the other hand, is
the deliberate disempowerment of a group of people in the federa-
tion politically, economically, socially and militarily, by another group
or groups who during the relevant time frame wield power and control
the allocation of materials and financial resources at the Center.316
Marginality refers simply to the state or condition of being pe-
ripheral,317 while marginalization necessarily presupposes the exis-
tence of an external agent(s) with the capacity to disempower or
311. See Minabere Ibelema, Nigeria: The Politics of Marginalization, 99 CURRENT HIST. 211
(2000). Professor Ibelema euphemistically branded the Hausa-Fulani claim of marginalization
an anomaly in the countrys politics. Id. at 213.
312. Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 250.
313. See IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 37-44
314. OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 7-9
315. Id. at 7 (quoting Adebayo Adedeji, Introduction: Marginalization and Marginality: Con-
text, Issues, and Viewpoints, in AFRICA WITHIN THE WORLD: BEYOND DISPOSSESSION AND DE-
PENDENCE 1, 5 (Adebayo Adedeji ed., 1993)).
317. Id.
2004] 217
Howard Law Journal
exclude.318 In Nigeria those external agents are Hausa-Fulanis and

Yorubas who benefitted immensely from Igbo departure from the
Nigerian system during the civil war from 1967 to 1970.319 During the
colonial era, all ethnic groups operated on a level-playing field, and
the only marginalizers were the British authorities.320 But by the end
of the civil war, these new marginalizers, with their cronies, managed
to assume such control of the countrys common political and eco-
nomic resources at the expense of Igbosgiving them a total capacity
to marginalize.321
The self-marginalization writers like Igbokwe perceive is, in actu-
ality, marginality or symptoms of marginalization. Igbo leaders since
the war have been individuals imposed upon by Nigerian authorities
who work overtime to help the victors destroy Igbo values and institu-
tions rather than seek to promote the Igbo collective interest.322
There are some of these leaders who will argue that even a
marginalized Igbo is still a Nigerian.323 In that case Malcolms memo-
rable diner analogy applies in full force.
Im not going to sit at our table and watch you eat, with nothing on
my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesnt make
you a diner, unless you eat some of whats on that plate. Being here
in America doesnt make you an American. Being born here in
America doesnt make you an American.324
Consistent with Malcolms unfaltering logic, Igbos condemned to
second-class citizenship in Nigeria are not really Nigerians. Much
318. Id. at 8.
319. See id. at 9.
320. Id.
321. Id.
322. Professor Achebe significantly assesses the state of Igbo leadership as bankrupt in his
important little book diagnosing the ills with Nigeria. ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 48.
323. One Igbo governor, who attributes Igbo neglect to the ethnic groups participation in
the civil war, pled with Nigeria to forgive Igbos. See VANGUARD (Lagos), Sept. 8, 2003 (on
file with author). Biafran veterans of the war did not find the action amusing. General Effiong
who himself performed the Biafran surrender said the governor was not in any position to ask
for any forgiveness since he was too young when the war was fought. The apology is at odds
with the position of Biafran leader General Ojukwu who continues to maintain that he has no
regrets over Biafra. See Auwalu S. Muazu, No Regrets Over BiafraOjukwu, DAILY TRUST
(Abuja), Feb. 18, 2003, available at http://messageboard.biafranigeriaworld.com/ultimatebb.cgi?
ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001083 (last visited Oct. 4, 2004). The governors action is ironic, even ab-
surd, given that (1) the countrys war-time leader General Gowon had personally apologized for
his role in the 1966 pogroms as well as for killings that occurred from non-observance of the
Geneva Convention by Nigerian troops in conducting the war, and (2) the Igbo cultural organi-
zation Oha-na-eze, in its petition to the Oputa Panel, had called upon the Nigerian government
to follow suit by rendering a public apology to Igbos. See OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note
100, at 16.
324. MOLEFI KETE ASANTE, ERASING RACISM 158 (2003) (quoting Malcolm X).
218 [VOL. 48:165

modern-day Igbo leadership in Nigeria calls to mind the severity of

psychological disordersdisorders, Fanon reminds us, that accom-
pany an oppressed peoples acceptance of the logic, mannerisms, eth-
ics, and other worldviews of the oppressor.325 Igbos and other
Nigerians who mouth the concept of Igbo self-marginalization forget
that Igbo present-day marginalization was a policy designed during
the war that actually began with General Gowons twelve-state struc-
ture in 1967.326 As far back as 1969, Nigerian authorities convened a
conference where they made a determination that it will be twenty-
five years before Igbos can be given positions in Nigeria.327 What is
different is that marginalization has continued beyond the initially
projected twenty-five years. It has gone on for thirty-seven long years
counting since the institution of Gowons twelve-state structure in
1967.
IV. ASSESSING GENERAL OBASANJOS CONTRIBUTION

TO VIOLATIONS OF IGBO HUMAN RIGHTS
General Obasanjo is one of few Nigerians privileged to have
played a central role in the Biafran conflict as well as in the countrys
post-civil war politics. He fought in the war and was the military com-
mander who received the Biafran surrender in January 1970.328 In the
post-war period, Obasanjo saw service briefly as a federal minister329
before becoming military Head of State in 1976 following the assassi-
nation of General Murtala Muhammed. After handing over power to
a democratically elected government in 1979, he retired from the army
and lived the life of a private citizen from which he reemerged into
national service in 1999 as an elected president. He was re-elected for
a second term in 2003 following a presidential election marred by elec-
toral irregularities.330 If he completes his present term, Obasanjo will
have led Nigeria in both military and civilian capacities for nearly
325. See generally FRANTZ FANON, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (Constance Farrington
trans., 1968). The behavior of many modern Igbo leaders also call to mind the words of the
American writer, Richard Wright, about the powerful Negro press whom Wright said is afraid
of stating the problem of the Negro fully because it is apprehensive lest the concentrated grav-
ity of that problem create such anxiety in [W]hites that they will withdraw what few paltry con-
cessions they are now yielding. Wright, supra note 48, at xxix.
326. See discussion supra note 246 and accompanying text; see also supra note 201.
328. See generally OLUSEGUN OBASANJO, MY COMMAND: AN ACCOUNT OF THE NIGERIAN
CIVIL WAR 1967-1970 (1981).
329. See ONUKABA A. OJO, IN THE EYES OF TIME: A BIOGRAPHY OF OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
170, 172 (1997).
2004] 219
Howard Law Journal
twelve years; this would make him the longest-serving chief executive
in the history of the country.
To whom much is given, much is expected. In fairness to the
General, the foundation for a number of the innovations in the politi-
cal system, such as the incorporation of the Federal Character Doc-
trine into the 1979 Constitution took place during his period in
office,331 even though, like other Nigerian leaders, the General pays
only lip service to the doctrine.
Despite the rare opportunity he has had as a central player in
Nigerian post-war politics to promote inclusive politics, however,
General Obasanjo has made little contribution to Igbo reintegration.
To the contrary, he has contributed immensely to Igbo marginaliza-
tion. A few weeks after the war, as an army commander, General
Obasanjo, unmindful of the governments no-victor, no-vanquished
policy,332 and of its famed blueprint for post-war reconstruction,333 en-
gaged in a publicized rebuke of Igbo officers seeking reintegration
into the army for alleged remorselessness.334
The General also participated in the destruction of the Igbo heri-
tage in education that took place after the civil war.335 During his
years in office as military Head of State, General Obasanjo estab-
lished and sited six polytechnics (technically-oriented tertiary institu-
tions), none of which was located in Igbo areas. His government also
implemented a so-called boundary adjustment exercise in 1976 that
excised certain oil-producing parts of Igboland that it transferred into
Rivers State,336 in the process negatively affecting the share of na-
tional revenue allocated to Igbos. Although known by nature to be
cantankerous, Obasanjo becomes more so when dealing with Igbos;
his tendency to explode when faced with Igbo audiences is
legendary.337

333. See discussion supra notes 303-04.
334. See KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 469.
335. See OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 27.
336. Id. at 30. A more extensive discussion of this problem is contained in Okere Steve
Nwosu, The National Question: Issues and Lessons of Boundary Adjustment in NigeriaThe
Ndoki Case, 15 J. THIRD WORLD STUD. 79 (1998).
337. Professors Achebes blunt book detailing the troubles with Nigeria includes a portion
where General Obasanjo questioned Igbo patriotism. ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 15; see also
EZENWA-OHAETO, supra note 152, at 208. Some of the sources used in this Article, particularly
the essays written by General Madiebo, see supra note 210, and Professor Ekwe-Ekwe, supra
note 220, are responses to one such explosive utterance where General Obasanjo stated, in com-
plete obliviousness of all facts relating to the cause of the war, that Igbos fought the war out of a
220 [VOL. 48:165

Igbo marginalization has not let up under the supposedly demo-

cratic presidency of General Obasanjo. Rather, in its petition to the
Oputa Panel, the Igbo cultural organization Oha-na-eze documents
new heights in [Igbo] marginalization under General Obasanjo.338
The organization avers that under General Obasanjo, the process of
Igbo marginalization has hit an ugly climax and run full circle.339
Besides being unfair and immoral, these inequities and deliberate
pattern of disempowerment340 also violate the Federal Character
Doctrine, which, as military head of state, General Obasanjo helped
write into the 1979 Constitution and has sworn to uphold. In addition
to these acts of marginalization, General Obasanjo has also reserved,
for Igbo organizations advocating for self-determination, a repression
and brutality that he has spared politicians and organizations in twelve
northern states of the country. In actuality, it is these states that, by
abrogating the countrys secular constitutional legal system and re-
placing it with Muslim Sharia law, are, unlike the groups General
Obasanjos government punishes, the ones who have actually engaged
in acts of effective secession from the country.341
V. REBUTTING THE CLAIM THAT IGBOS ARE NO MORE

VICTIMS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ATROCITIES THAN
OTHER NIGERIANS
Even non-Igbo Nigerians concede that the Nigerian state violates
the collective human rights of Igbos.342 What some of them do not
subscribe to is the violation of Igbo civil-political and socioeconomic
desire to control the oil resources of minorities in Eastern Nigeria. Why, Professor Ekwe-Ekwe
pungently quizzed, did Nigerian military forces not stop the war after the conquer of the non-
Igbo speaking portion of Biafra including the oil fields and installations, something accom-
plished after only 11 months by June 1967, but rather kept fighting for 19 long extra months until
January 1970. Ekwe-Ekwe, supra note 220.
338. See OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 35-37, 40. In its memorandum, Oha-na-
eze lambasted General Obasanjos political appointments as most blatantly partial. Id. at 8.
339. Id. at 8. One non-Igbo top politician, who, in obvious corroboration of this Oha-na-eze
assessment, has criticized what he views correctly as the Nigerian national governments policy
of total neglect of Igboland, was Alhaji Ghali Umar NaAbba, Speaker of the House of Repre-
sentatives from 1999-2003, who, moved by the sorry state of the roads in Igboland following a
visit there, stated: It is very sad that . . . [Anambra State] still suffers federal neglect after 29
years of civil war . . . Let me use this opportunity to express our heartfelt sympathy with Anam-
bra State and South-East zone for suffering such a very serious federal neglect. Id. at 40 (citing
THISDAY (Lagos) Nov. 22, 1999, at 42).
340. Id. at 33.
341. See Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 249.
342. See, e.g., Ransome-Kuti, supra 250, at 48 (commenting that [s]ince the civil war[,] one
can hardly see an Igbo in any prominent position in government institutions in Nigeria).
2004] 221
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(individual) rights.343 Their argument is that Nigeria is a country that

disrespects the human rights of all its citizens, Igbos as well as non-
Igbos. There is some merit to this reasoning since, generally, Nigerian
governments have a poor reputation for the observance of human
rights.344
However, in addition to the disrespect of solidarity rights, Nigeria
also violates the civil-political and socioeconomic rights of Igbos more
than those of other Nigerians. This Article has detailed the human
rights atrocities against Igbos that occurred before and during the civil
war, as well as violations since then. Igbo individuals who have been
marginalized since the war suffered that experience solely because
they were Igbos. Similarly, Igbo individuals whose civil-political and
socioeconomic rights were violated during the massacres of 1966 and
the civil war endured that experience because they were Igbos.
Geographic location had little to do with the meting out of atroci-
ties since Igbos were targeted regardless of the portion of the country
in which they were found. Non-Igbo Easterners whose human rights
were violated in these tragedies were those their northern tormentors
could not successfully differentiate from Igbos. They were not victims
of atrocities because they were Easterners; they were victims because
their violators mistook them for Igbos. This was the case with the
massacres but also the case during the war after the return of Igbos in
non-Igbo areas to Igboland.345 Here too, we are in the realm where
the distinction between individual and collective rights completely
breaks down, given that the individuals whose rights are violated suf-
fer that fate because of their membership as Igbos.346 So, because the
various categories have tied into one, the argument about atrocities in
some categories and no atrocities in others does not really hold.
Igbos are undoubtedly exposed to deprivations of life, liberty, se-
curity, and subsistencethings to which they as humans have rights
simply because they are Igbos; these deprivations are of a kind that
343. A Yoruba scholar in the audience took this position during the presentation of the ini-
tial version of this paper at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, on April 4, 2003.
344. See generally Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 209-76.
345. Support for this position is found in the fact that Igbos in mid-western Nigeria (known
as Ika Igbos) were also victims of atrocities even though they were not Easterners and therefore
not part of Biafra. Over 600 people were killed in one spate of attacks on Ika Igbos in 1967.
OHA-NA-EZE, PETITION, supra note 100, at 13 (drawing on sources that included the documenta-
tion of an eye-witness, Emma Okocha, appropriately titled Blood on the Niger). They would not
have been targets of atrocities if the aim of their tormentors had been Easterners (since they
were not Easterners), rather than Igbos.
346. See discussion supra notes 45-46 and accompanying text.
222 [VOL. 48:165

non-Igbos do not experience. Nigeria has an Igbo problem.347 As

Professor Achebe points out in his book on the trouble with Nigeria,
one singular issue on which non-Igbo groups agree is their common
resentment of the Igbo.348
The Nigerian government may rebut that it should not be blamed
if Igbos became targets of more human rights atrocities than non-Igbo
Nigerians so long as it provides the same level of protection for all
Nigerians, Igbos and non-Igbos alike, without regard to ethnic origins.
But this argument is unavailing because a people, who are resented by
their compatriots and thus more vulnerable, like the Igbos, deserve
protection that matches the higher level of danger they alone face as
they go about their everyday business. However, no such increased
protection exists. Rather, as the Igbo cultural organization Oha-na-
eze points out, simply because of their ethnicity, Igbos enjoy less pro-
tection of the law than any other ethnic group in Nigeria.349
For example, in 1994, Islamic fundamentalists in Kano350 seized
and beheaded an Igbo man, George Akaluka, for allegedly driving
over a page of the Moslem bible, the Koran.351 As one representative
narrative of the incident goes, the decedent
was murdered by Shiite Moslem Fundamentalists at the Bompai
prison in Kano. They killed him, cut off his head, hoisted it on a
spike, and like an act from the Stone Age, paraded it round the city.
There were policemen in Kano. There were prison warders in
Kano. They looked the other way.352
None of the individuals who committed this heinous crime, nor
the police officers from whose custody the fundamentalists snatched
the deceased, were brought to justice.353 It is in this context that one
understands the quick rebuttal by one witness at the Oputa Panel to a
347. See ACHEBE, supra note 83, at 45-50.

348. Id. at 45. To rationalize their hatred for Igbos, non-Igbo Nigerians call Igbos aggressive,
arrogant, clannish, and the like. Id. But Professor Achebe in his blunt book diagnosing the
trouble with Nigeria calls these charges, as well as the one about the perceived solidarity of the
Igbos, figments of their authors imagination. Igbos did not concern themselves with pan-Igbo
unity nor were they geared to securing an advantage over non-Igbo Nigerians. Beyond town or
village the Igbo has no compelling loyalty, he said. Id. at 47. Rather, without the benefit of
the kind of centralized leadership their competitors presume for them, Igbos have had to cope
without help with a new Nigeria in which individual progress would no longer depend on the
rules set by a fairly impartial colonial umpire. Id. at 47-48.
350. Kano is a metropolitan city in northern Nigeria with an ugly reputation for atrocities
against Igbos. See discussions supra notes 157-58 and infra note 369 and accompanying text.
351. Aham, supra note 177, at 35.
353. Id.
2004] 223
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suggestion that Igbos live a happy existence in Nigeria. They have

been slaughtered at every turn, he retorted. Any time there is a
riot, they are slaughtered. Can you say that Gideon Akaluka is living
peacefully? That is an example.354 A good part of the Nigerian gov-
ernments deficit in its human rights record derives from atrocities
targeted at Igbos.
VI. CORRECTING VIOLATIONS OF IGBO HUMAN

RIGHTS IN NIGERIA
Nigeria does not provide an effective structure to properly ad-
dress Igbo human rights and the correction of past violations. Correc-
tion, as defined here, consists of two complementary and mutually
reinforcing techniques, namely reparations, and institutions of the po-
litical system like federalism and democracy (conveniently denoted
here as political structure). Reparation is necessary to repair past
atrocities, while an appropriate structure is needed to guard against
future abuses. I discuss these two techniques or measures in turn.
A. Reparations
Reparation means to repair a victim or put that victim back, as
much as possible, to his pre-damage condition. The term also con-
notes restitution or the return to a victim of something wrongfully
taken from that victim. Although not identical, the two concepts are
sometimes used together or interchangeably. Thus, the Igbo cultural
organization Oha-na-eze designated its petition to the Oputa Panel as
a call for reparations and appropriate restitution,355 and one scholar,
focusing on the massacres of 1966, advised Igbos to exercise their
right to seek full restitution for damages arising from those horren-
dous mass killings.356 Applied to Igbos, reparations will involve the
award of monetary payments to those who suffered damages as a re-
sult of the massacres357 or from the illegal conduct of the civil war.358
When properly used, reparation brings healing and closure, and pro-
motes reconciliation among former enemies. It may also, where it in-
corporates abuser accountability for human rights sins, deter
354. Mustapha Ogunsakin, Oputa Panel Ends Sitting, Warns of Imminent Crisis, GUARDIAN
(Lagos), Oct. 19, 2001.
356. See infra discussion note 372.
357. See supra discussion Part III(B)(1).
358. See supra discussion Part III(B)(2).
224 [VOL. 48:165

individuals and groups who might in the future be tempted to violate

the human rights of others.
Reparation requires individuals and groups who are victims of
human rights abuses to bring a lawsuit. The use of lawsuits for cor-
recting human rights atrocities, however, has some inherent weak-
nesses that must be kept in mind. First, individuals or groups affected
must themselves bring these lawsuits rather than rely on the govern-
ment to do so for them. Second, these actions must be brought before
the statute of limitations runs, which is about ten years in jurisdictions
such as the United States under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789
(ACTA).359 It is probably because of these inherent weaknesses asso-
ciated with lawsuits that governments choosing to put the sad history
of a repressive past behind them prefer to set up truth and reconcilia-
tion commissions to investigate past human rights atrocities and rec-
ommend measures to repair these errors and move the nation
forward.360 This was probably the kind of consideration General
Obasanjo had in mind when setting up the Oputa Panel.361
The investigation into human rights abuses unaccompanied by
reparations is incomplete and amounts to little more than window
dressing that does little to promote reconciliation. In South Africa,
the investigation of abuses that took place during the Apartheid Era
was followed by an agreement by the government to pay reparations
totaling $85 million to more than 19,000 victims who testified about
their suffering before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.362
Under the reparation scheme, the family of each victim of apartheid
would receive a one-time payment more than the average annual sal-
ary in South Africa.363
359. 28 U.S.C. 1350 (2000). Courts have interpreted the statute to carry a ten-year statute
of limitations. See, e.g., Papa v. United States, 281 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2002) (holding that the
ten-year statute of limitations provided by the Torture Victim Protection Act applies to the
Alien Tort Claims Act); Cabiri v. Assasie-Gyimah, 921 F. Supp. 1189 (S.D.N.Y. 1996); Forti v.
Suarez-Mason, 672 F. Supp. 1531 (N.D. Cal 1987). The Statute confers jurisdiction upon U.S.
federal courts to hear civil damages claims by aliens for torts committed in violation of the law
of nations or a treaty of the United States, regardless of where the torts were committed. Id.
360. Notable scholarship on the work and functions of truth committees set up since the
1970s in various parts of the world include ANDREW RIGBY, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION:
AFTER THE VIOLENCE (2001); TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: HOW EMERGING DEMOCRACIES RECKON
WITH FORMER REGIMES (Neil J. Kritz ed., 1995); Priscilla B. Hayner, Fifteen Truth Commissions:
1974 to 1994: A Comparative Study, 16 HUM. RTS. Q. 597 (1994).
361. See Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 218 n.58.
362. Government to Pay Families of Apartheid Victims, CHI. TRIB. RED EYE ED., Apr. 16,
2003, at 10.
363. Id.
2004] 225
Howard Law Journal
Granting reparations would still be the fair and proper thing to

do even if, as this Article argues, Igbos are granted separate statehood
to safeguard their human rights. Although exhaustion after nearly
three years of war was a factor, Igbos repudiated a government in
exile364 and eschewed any possibility of a guerrilla struggle365 in the
belief that a government which fought so hard for nearly three years
to reunify them with the rest of Nigeria will see it fit to rectify the
grievances that led to the war. Unfortunately, the Nigerian govern-
ment failed to reciprocate the good-faith gestures.
Despite the various benefits associated with reparation, none of
the millions of Igbos damaged as a result of the massacres and the
illegal conduct of the civil war received any compensation for their
losses from the government. Similarly, none of the individuals and
groups who committed (and continue to commit) human rights atroci-
ties against Igbos were punished. Nor, as earlier indicated, did any
promised post-war rebuilding take place in Igboland; instead since
the end of the civil war, the absence of federal investments in roads,
industries, power supplies, communication technologies, and water
supplies has become a fact of life.366 Payment of compensation for
the loss of lives, liberty, and property that Igbos have endured since
1966 would have sent an unmistakable message that there are conse-
quences attached to abuses of Igbo, or any other groups, human
rights. As one analyst observes, referring to the massacres of 1966,
To ensure that this bloodbath never happens again in Nigeria or else-
where in Africa, state(s), corporate interests, and persons responsible
for it must be made to account.367
Making accountability for human rights atrocities an integral part
of any reparation scheme for past violations will compel individuals or
groups to think twice before they violate others individual and collec-
tive human rights. Conversely, the lack of reparation for past human
rights abuses in Nigeria is probably among the reasons these abuses
recur. None of the individuals involved in the death of Gideon
Akaluka, including the putative law enforcement officers in whose
very presence the fundamentalists seized him, were ever brought to
book.368
364. See Lt.-Col. Effiong Announces Surrender of Biafra, supra note 206, at 451.
365. See STREMLAU, supra note 207, ch. 12.
366. Ebere Onwudiwe, Oil and Nigerias Economy, GUARDIAN (Lagos), Sept. 28, 2003.
226 [VOL. 48:165

The same absence of reparation, rather than a matter of any coin-

cidence, could also have been the reason why atrocities have repeat-
edly taken place in certain locations, such as Kano, the site of
numerous well-orchestrated riots and massacres, including the ones
of 1953, 1966, 1980, and 1982.369 No less tragic is it that it was also in
this very city, in 1994, that the Igbo decedent Akaluka was decapi-
tated allegedly because he drove over a page of the Moslem Koran.
Oha-na-eze filed a petition with the Oputa Panel on behalf of Igbos in
the sum of 8.6 trillion Naira for atrocities against Igbos from 1966 to
1999. However, five years since setting up the Oputa Panel and four
years since the Panel completed its work and submitted its report, the
Obasanjo government has not released the result of the Oputa
Panel,370 and has therefore not made its position known concerning
the payment of any reparations to Igbos.371
One analyst advises that, besides the Oputa Panel, Igbo people
must exercise their right to seek full restitution for [the] dreadful mas-
sacres [perpetrated against them] beyond Nigerias territorial jurisdic-
tion, if need be.372 An impediment here, as earlier indicated, could
be the statute of limitationsa reason why a fair-minded government
should act to rectify these atrocities rather than leave it to individuals
and groups to bring lawsuits. However, there are more recent viola-
tions not barred by the passage of time for which Igbos have a cause
of action.
Igbos could also work to protect the human rights of non-Igbo
victims of atrocities. Igbo experience in Nigeria as victims of atroci-
ties makes them a conscience of the nation for the defense of
human and democratic rights.373 Such contribution is already occur-
ring now: for example, the Social and Economic Rights Action

370. See Human Rights Watch, Nigeria: President Must End Impunity for Human Rights
Abusers, HUM. RTS. WATCH (July 3, 2003), at http://hrw.org/press/2003/07/nigeria070303.htm;
Ken Roth, Letter to President Obasanjo Regarding His Second Term, HUM. RTS. WATCH (July 3,
2003), at http://hrw.org/press/2003/07/nigeria070303ltr.htm.
371. Regarding reparation, compensation can never be simply individual or collective mone-
tary payoff. Rather, there are five essential aspects which any meaningful approach to repara-
tions must address: (1) public admission by the Nigerian government of the genocide
perpetrated against Igbos, (2) public apology, (3) public recognition, through the media and the
school system, aimed at teaching and preserving memory of the horror and meaning of the geno-
cide, (4) compensation, and (5) institution of measures designed to prevent the reoccurrence of
such massive destruction of human life, human culture, and human possibility. See MAULANA
KARENGA, INTRODUCTION TO BLACK STUDIES 393-99 (3d ed. 2002).
373. See Osuagwu, Part 1, supra note 95 (stating that Igbos dont want injustice in a commu-
nity of which they are part. Any community that plans to have them as members must be pre-
2004] 227
Howard Law Journal
Center, a human rights non-governmental organization based in La-

gos, Nigeria and directed by an Igbo, Felix Morka, successfully argued
a case against the Nigerian government before the African Commis-
sion on Human and Peoples Rights for violating the socioeconomic
rights of the Ogoni people.374
The Igbo nation should also bring claims against ethnic groups
involved in the violation of Igbo human rights, like Hausa-Fulanis.
Such lawsuits against ethnic groups might afford them much needed
opportunity to clear their names. At the hearings of the Oputa Com-
mission, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), which represented the
Hausa-Fulani ethnic group, insisted that We have children and
grandchildren and we must put things in their proper perspective for
posterity[s] sake.375 This was in response to the counsel of Oha-na-
ezes contention that the Igbo suit was one directed only against the
government. Lawsuits against groups, where they are not time-
barred, afford them the opportunity, as the ACF said, to put things in
proper perspective for the sake of posterity.
B. Political Structure
Political structure plays a major role not only in the correction of
human rights atrocities but also in the protection of human rights.
Lasting protection of any groups human rights requires an appropri-
ate political structure in addition to any reparation. An effective po-
litical structure is necessary given the already specified limitations of
reparations. Although reparation is a remedy for past violations and
may also deter future violations, it is not geared specifically for the
latter purpose. For these future violations, an appropriate political
structure is necessary. Despite the utility of an effective political
structure in correcting and institutionalizing the protection of human
rights, no such structure exists in Nigeria for the safeguard of Igbo
human rights. Neither federalism nor democracy, in the manner it has
been practiced in Nigeria, supply the appropriate structure.
1. Federalism
Nigerias dynamic ethnic pluralism rules out a unitary system as a
viable option for societal organization and protection of human rights.
pared to be just); see also Osuagwu, Part 2, supra note 95 (citing Dr. Azikiwes statement to the
effect that Igbo manifest destiny is [t]o free the African from the bondage-of-ages).
374. Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 214, 215 & n.34, 240.
375. See Ogunsakin, supra note 354.
228 [VOL. 48:165

A confederal system is also ruled out, given that the country has no
experience with it. A confederal system may, however, hold some
value as a negotiating tool and a halfway house en route to full inde-
pendence for departing ethnic groups.376 The unsuitability or inappli-
cability of these two systems as political structures for the
safeguarding of human rights leaves federalism as the only remaining
structural option. But, from the very beginning, federalism in Nigeria
was designed as a tool of northern (particularly Hausa-Fulani) domi-
nation that was never meant to be human rights-friendly.
Following the killings of Igbos and the destruction of Igbo prop-
erty in Kano in 1953, British colonial authorities came to the realiza-
tion that Nigeria . . . if it was to be a nation, must be a federation,
with as few subjects reserved for the Central Government as would
preserve national unity.377 But, the federal system they created in
1954 was a lopsided one in which one federating unit, the Northern
Region, was bigger than all the other units combined. British authori-
ties rejected all pleas to correct this imbalance through the creation of
more regions, on the ground that doing so would delay Nigerias inde-
pendence.378 However, they accepted the recommendation of the
Willink Commission for entrenchment of fundamental guarantees in
the independence constitution to allay the fears of minorities of ma-
jority domination.379
The nationalist leaders who received power after independence
made few changes. So, except for the creation of the Mid-Western
Region in 1964, the federalist structure handed down by Britain re-
mained unchanged after independence, contributing much to the in-
stability that led to the demise of the First Republic in 1966.380
376. See infra note 410 for a discussion of Professor Nwabuezes suggestion for a national
conference. See also infra note 538 and accompanying text.
377. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 10 (quoting the diary of Colonial Secretary, Lord
Chandos). While Lord Chandos option is obviously against a unitary system, it is not clear
whether what he actually meant was a federal or con-federal system, given the reference to a
fewness of subjects lodged in a central government as would preserve national unity. Id. The
reference calls to mind a confederal as opposed to a federal system. A confederal system is, by
definition, a league of independent states in which a central government or administration han-
dles only those matters of common concern expressly delegated to it by the member states.
STEFFEN W. SCHMIDT ET AL., AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS TODAY, 82 (2003). Ex-
cept for matters like defense and foreign affairs, constituent sub-national units in a confederal
system retain all attributes of independent statehood. Unless the member-units specifically ap-
prove, in such a system, the national government has no authority to make laws directly applica-
ble to individuals.
378. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 11.
379. See supra note 56-57 and accompanying text.
380. Diamond, supra note 252, at 465.
2004] 229
Howard Law Journal
General Gowons twelve-state structure, unveiled in 1967, came too

late to avert a civil war and was actually, as earlier indicated, an imme-
diate factor that precipitated the conflict.381 Also, Gowons goal was
not to promote any human rights, but rather to recover Hausa-Fulani
domination, lost as a result of the first military coup,382 and to recon-
stitute it in a manner such that no group would ever threaten it again.
Due to the fact that Igbos were perceived as the most lethal threat to
northern interests, they were logically the group Gowon meant to
hurt by his state creation exercise.383
From a single, modest national government and four regions in
1966, the country grew into a gigantic bureaucratic machine of one
national government and thirty-six state governments plus a federal
capital territory.384 Similarly, from the vibrant, albeit unstable, system
during the First Republic (1960-1966) in which powerful regions vied
to dominate a comparatively weak central government, the character
of the countrys federalism metamorphosed into one where a powerful
central government dominated dozens of weak sub-national govern-
ments. So vitiated has been the power of the sub-national govern-
ments in comparison to the all-powerful central government that the
six zones into which the states were grouped by the military in 1996385
have been suggested as potential replacements for the numerous
states as federating units.386
These occurrences call to mind one French saying about how
things remain the same the more they change. The one constant is
northern control. To provide Hausa-Fulanis the centralized control
they need to perpetuate their domination of the political system,
Nigerian leaders since 1967 have operated the countrys federal sys-
tem in a unitary format. This distortion of the countrys federalism in
favor of Hausa-Fulanis assumed such height under military rule that
the leader of the Biafran separatist campaign General Ojukwu, in an
381. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 96-97 (noting how Gowons shrewd move to
block secession [by creating new states] turned out to be the final pressure on the trigger releas-
ing the explosion); see also discussion supra notes 200-01.
382. General Gowon took pains to underscore in his speech after mounting power that God
has put the affairs of this country in the hands of another northerner. See General Gowon, No
Trust or Confidence in a Unitary System of Government (radio broadcast Aug. 1, 1966), re-
printed in KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 196-97.
384. See, e.g., Richard Joseph et al., Nigeria, in INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS
546, 575-85 (Mark Kesselman et al. eds., 2d ed. 2000) (listing the organization of the countrys
complex political system).
385. See discussion supra note 87.
386. See Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 270-71.
230 [VOL. 48:165

important lecture in 1994, analogized the countrys unity to Jonah in

the belly of the Whalethe Whale being Hausa-Fulanis and Jonah
the rest of the country, especially Igbos.
For a man to whom unity remains that of Jonah in the belly of the
Whale, that man must question his situation. He is not comfortable
in the Whales belly. It is dark. It is soggy. He wants out lest he
dies. The man owes himself to get out despite the fact that the
Whale has felt no discomfort. To this man in extremis lies the obli-
gation to quit.387
Spells of democratic rule in the country were expected to change
but have not had any ameliorative impact on this centralization. This
includes the present supposedly democratic rule under General
Obasanjo.388 This unitary federalism not only runs against the grain
of colonial wisdom which recognized the imperativeness of federalism
as the only viable format for organizing the country,389 but it is also
hypocritical, given that General Ironsis Unification Decree was the
excuse Hausa-Fulanis used in 1966 to perpetrate the atrocities of mas-
sacres they callously visited on Igbos.390 The centralized control,
needless to say, unfortunately fulfils Senator McCarthys uncanny pre-
diction made in 1969 that General Gowon would seek only to accom-
plish a reconstituted unitary state.391
Some Nigerians believe that a return to a true federalism
could provide the autonomy necessary to assuage ethnic groups de-
mand for self-determination. This appears to be the position Beko
Ransome-Kuti canvassed in a 1999 lecture embodying his vision for a
new Nigeria.392 He praised the countrys pre-1966 experiment in fed-
eralism and warned that [o]ur future is bleak unless we can liberate
ourselves from this forced union supposedly of command unitary
federalism that is squeezing the life out of us.393 However, it is
doubtful that any true federalism is an option for safeguarding Igbo
human rights in Nigeria. First, the defective federalism the country
practiced before 1966 set the stage for the political instability that led
to the human rights deprivations of Igbos. Second, the countrys ex-
387. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 98 (quoting General Ojukwu).

389. See supra note 377; see also GRAF, supra note 175, at 133 (stating that an important
truism of Nigerian politics is that the countrys continuing existence as a nation-state hinges on
its capacity to evolve and maintain an adequate system of federalism).
391. McCarthy, Speech, supra note 194, at 405.
392. See generally Ransome-Kuti, supra note 250, at 46-49.
393. Id. at 49.
2004] 231
Howard Law Journal
perience since independence shows how easy it can be for the coun-
trys northern-dominated governments to re-centralize power to suit
Hausa-Fulani hegemonic purposes. Finally, federalism does not exist
by itself but rather operates in tandem with and is affected by critical
variables, such as the quality of a countrys democracy, the topic to
which I next turn.
Revealingly, Dr. Ransome-Kuti indicated in his lecture that The
principle of self-determination is now so well established in interna-
tional law that instead of issues degenerating into civil war, this is an
option that has to be held in front of us all at all times.394 He also
challenged the assertion contained in the preamble of the countrys
1999 constitution proclaiming that Nigerians have firmly and sol-
emnly resolved to live in unity and harmony as one indissoluble
country.395 He instead stated that As a matter of fact some sections
of the country have been through such degrading and painful times in
Nigeria that they might well prefer to live alone or join a more viable
and conducive enterprise rather than continue with the present ar-
rangement.396 In short, with all due respect to Dr. Ransome-Kuti,
true federalism, like proposals such as state creation, federal
character, zoning, [and] rotational presidency, ranks among the
pretensions today that have failed to settle [the countrys] political
contentions.397
2. Democracy
Nigeria is a country where, since independence in 1960, the ship
of state has been operated with little regard for democracy. Neither
experimentation with the parliamentary model borrowed from Britain
nor the presidential system adopted from the United States has pro-
duced any democracy for the country to date.398 Factors that have
served to truncate or neutralize democracy in the country include, but
are by no means limited to, military rule, political and bureaucratic
corruption, and electoral corruption. Long military rule in the coun-
try, until recently the norm rather than an aberration, left little time
and room for any actual experiment with democracy. Also, some of
394. Id. at 48.

395. Id. at 49.
396. Id.
397. Aliyu Tilde, BluntPoint (1): Professor Sagay, Buy the Bride a Single-Bed (June 11, 2003),
available at http://www.gamji.com/tilde25.htm.
398. For a good overview of the countrys checkered experience with these various models of
democracy, see Diamond, supra note 252, at 417-91.
232 [VOL. 48:165

these military regimes, particularly the ones that operated from 1983
to 1998, were exceedingly repressive and marked by human rights
abuses.399 Finally, as General Obasanjos style of leadership since
1999 bears out, military rule has instilled into the political system resi-
dues of military values, including authoritarian rule and the use of mil-
itary force in the resolution of non-military disputes, both of which are
inconsistent with democratic culture.400
With respect to political and bureaucratic corruption, Nigeria has
a dubious reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the
world.401 The nature of the government in power, whether military or
civilian, has had no impact on the incidence of corruption as each of
these forms of government has produced corrupt public officials and
been characterized by corrupt practices. Also, the scale of corruption
has grown progressively with each successive regime.402 Finally, elec-
399. See, e.g., Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 222-25; Philip C. Aka, Nigeria:
The Need for an Effective Policy of Ethnic Reconciliation in the New Century, 14 TEMPLE INTL &
COMP. L.J. 327, 351-52 (2000).
400. See, e.g., Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 259-61; Philip C. Aka, The
Dividend of Democracy: Analyzing U.S. Support for Nigerian Democratization, 22 B.C. THIRD
WORLD L.J. 225, 234-37 (2002) [hereinafter Aka, Dividend of Democracy].
401. The country has always ranked high on Transparency Internationals (TI) index of most
corrupt countries in the world. TI is a watchdog organization committed to exposing and com-
bating corruption in the world. Before 1999, the country ranked number twenty-eight in the
world. Inauguration of democratic rule in the country was supposed to change this picture, but,
unfortunately, did not. Instead, the incidence of corruption has grown worse. Since Obasanjo
took office, the country has ranked as the second-most corrupt country in the world, at one time
beating Cameroon to the dubious number-one prize, and beaten last year only by Bangladesh.
See Doug Ireland, Will the French Indict Cheney? NATION ONLINE (Dec. 29, 2003), at
http:www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040112&s=Ireland. Until becoming president in 1999,
Obasanjo was himself a member of TI.
402. See id. Since the 1980s, the U.S. State Department has issued numerous travel notices
warning American travelers to Nigeria concerning their safety and how to guard against becom-
ing victims of crime, scam, and related fraudulent practices. The institution of democratic rule in
1999 has not brought a stop to these travel warnings. Rather, under General Obasanjo, the State
Department has issued several notices, the latest in December 2003, which superseded a previ-
ous warning issued six months earlier. The recent notice warned Americans travelers to Nigeria
about possible violent crime committed by ordinary criminals, as well as by persons in police
and military uniforms [that] can occur throughout the country, about kidnapping for ransom of
persons associated with the petroleum sector common in the Niger Delta area, about religious
tension between Muslim and Christian communities resulting in occasional acts of isolated
communal violence that could erupt quickly and without warning, and about advance fee
fraud and other scams by Nigerian-based businesses and individuals that target foreigners
worldwide. U.S. Department of State, Travel Warning: Nigeria, Dec. 29, 2003 (on file with au-
thor). Finally, the report included this information about transportation in Nigeria: Use of
public transportation throughout Nigeria can be dangerous and should be avoided. Taxis pose
risks because of the possibility of fraudulent or criminal operators, old and unsafe vehicles, and
poorly maintained roads. Most Nigerian airlines have aging fleets, and maintenance and opera-
tional procedures may be inadequate to ensure passenger safety. Id. This must be one of the
most elaborate reports for any country not on the U.S. terrorist list with which the American
government maintains relations. But, even on the terror front, Nigeria has American homeland
2004] 233
Howard Law Journal
toral corruption is pervasive in Nigeria. Like with political and bu-

reaucratic corruption, the scale of the phenomenon has grown
progressively over time with each successive regime outdoing the
other in breadth and absurdity. For example, the general elections of
2003 conducted by the Obasanjo government topped all previous elec-
tions in scale of irregularity.403 To date, British authorities have con-
ducted the only well-administered election in Nigeriathat of 1959.404
Democracy is a system of government in which the coercive
powers of the government are effectively constrained by the constitu-
tion.405 It is a process involving widely shared beliefs, renewed in
each generation through practice and performance until it be-
comes so habitually practiced and observed that it is very unlikely to
break down.406 The beauty of democracy is the slow but steady ac-
cretion in constitutional change the process makes possible. General
Obasanjo came into office in 1999 following non-free elections con-
ducted on the basis of a constitution drafted by the departing military
without popular input and participation.407 The nation did not want
to give the army any reason to prolong its stay in office408 and the
security officials worried since enormous support exists in the Muslim North of the country for
Osama bin Laden. See Aka, Dividend of Democracy, supra note 400, at 274-75.
403. See, e.g., Wadas Nas, The Rigged Presidency, WKLY. TRUST (Abuja), May 10, 2003;
Rory Mungoven, Letter to President Obasanjo on Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet-
ing, HUMAN RTS. NEWS, (Nov. 27, 2003), at http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/11/nigeria-
ltr112703.htm (reminding the president that [t]he April and May 2003 elections, which returned
you to office for a second term and secured an overwhelming victory for the Peoples Democracy
Party (PDP), were marred by violence and intimidation, as well as widespread rigging); Joseph
Winter, Analysis: Nigerias One-Party Creep, BBC NEWS ONLINE (Apr. 21, 2003), at http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2964759.stm. Domestic and foreign observers who monitored
the elections, including the U.S. National Democratic Institute, U.S. International Republican
Institute, and the European Union, found large-scale irregularities that compromised the integ-
rity of any verdict coming from those elections. One non-political group of eminent Nigerians
known as the Patriots was so appalled by the results that it called for an Interim Government of
National Unity in place of swearing-in General Obasanjo for a second term as president. See
Chukwudi Nwabuko et al., The Patriots Supports Call for Interim Government, THISDAY (La-
gos), May 23, 2003. The group maintained that to allow the results of the elections obtained by
means of well-attested electoral malpractice would subvert democracy and constitutionalism
and entrench election-rigging as a permanent feature of Nigerian politics. Obasanjo and his
political party rejected the suggestion.
404. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 12 (based on the assessment of K.W. POST, THE
NIGERIAN FEDERATION OF 1959 (1963)).
405. John Mukum Mbaku, INSTITUTIONS AND REFORM IN AFRICA 189 (1997).
406. See Introduction to POLITICS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, supra note 252, at 53, 56-57.
407. Ransome-Kuti, supra note 250, at 49; Eghosa E. Osaghae, In Search of Democratization
Middle Grounds: Nigeria and South Africa in Perspective, in TRANSITION TO DEMOCRATIC GOV-
ERNANCE IN AFRICA, supra note 268, at 350-51. For a more detailed explanation of the undemo-
cratic nature of the constitution from a top legal draftsman in a position to know, see Chief
Rotimi Williams, A Constitution for the People of Nigeria, GUARDIAN (Lagos), Aug. 26, 1999.
408. See Osaghae, supra note 407, at 351.
234 [VOL. 48:165

general expectation was that the constitution would be reviewed upon

the president taking office to garner increased popular acceptance of
the document. Unfortunately, no such revision took place.
During his tenure in office, calls have been made for a national
conference to deal with emergent, critical national issues and a defini-
tion of the terms of the union. Such calls preceded his regime, but
assumed new urgency due to new events, such as the controversy and
violence surrounding the adoption of a different legal system based on
Muslim Sharia law in many northern states.409 Despite the compelling
merit of the arguments for a national conference,410 no such confer-
ence to date, more than four years since the president took office, has
been held; momentous issues going to the countrys very integrity as
one nation have continued to fester. From its very beginning, Nigeria
has been governed by leaders who do not believe in fundamental re-
structuring. These include General Obasanjo, who one writer said
410. An editorial comment by the Lagos Guardian and a piece by Professor Ben O.
Nwabueze, a foremost constitutional lawyer, typify these calls. In its editorial, The Guardian
argued that the country faces many national problems, which, if left unresolved, could heat up
the system and make governmental business difficult and public peace fragile. National Confer-
ence: The Way Forward, GUARDIAN (Lagos), June 21, 2001. A national conference is needed to
resolve these pressing problems and [to] rescu[e] the country from the path of perfidy and
hypocrisy into which the military derailed it through their misrule and corruption. Id. The
conference is also about justice, and equity, and due respect for the peoples aspirations. Id.
The newspaper noted that [m]any of the problems facing the country . . . arose from a violation
of that original consensus, particularly on the sensitive issues of federalism, power sharing, re-
source allocation, and the constitution. Id. The conference should not be cosmetic, but
rather a thorough re-examination of the Nigerian state to ensure that every group within the
union can be proud and confident that it is part of a workable arrangement that is built on a
foundation of truth and justice. Id. It should be both general and inclusive in the sense that
it examines all possible issues and produces conclusions that should form the basis for the prepa-
ration of a true peoples constitution that can guarantee a future of stability and progress for the
country. Id. So long as the scope is right, the paper stated, it does not matter whether the
conference is sovereign, assessed in terms of whether its conclusions binds the government
now in office or non-sovereign, meaning its conclusions are non-binding. Id. Convening such
a conference is good for the peace and stability of the country and something, the editorial said,
the government should facilitate not as an act of magnanimity but in response to the peoples
wishes and desires given that it is neither the president nor his government that is at stake, but
the Nigerian state and its manner of organisation. Id.
In his piece, Professor Nwabueze also underscores the imperativeness of a national confer-
ence. Issues to be addressed at such a conference include (1) resource control, (2) the religious
neutrality of the state, (3) rotation of the presidency, and (4) restructuring of the countrys fed-
eral system. These are, he says, issues so complex and fundamental, that they are an exercise in
constitution-making, transcending the power of the government to effect the people without
recourse. He argues that the confederation should be tabled at the conference as an option of
last resort, if delegates are unable to come to an agreement on these issues. See Ben O.
Nwabueze, The Imperative of a National Dialogue, GUARDIAN, June 28, 2001.
2004] 235
Howard Law Journal
retains a nostalgic love for the current concept of Nigeria.411 The
411. Paul Nwabuikwu, Fighting over Talking, GUARDIAN (Lagos), Dec. 8, 1999. A Nigerian
newspaper editorial expressed the opinion, in many respects still unfortunately valid today, that
the rulers used power that they held constitutionally to do unconstitutional things. . . . Nigeria
had censuses that were not censuses, elections that were not elections, and finally governments
that were not governments. KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 28 (quoting an editorial enti-
tled The Last Hurrah from a Nigerian Newspaper from February 1966). Supporters of the pre-
sent concept of Nigeria overstretch their luck regarding the extent to which they can nurture the
status quo ante in opposition to real change. Calls for true federalism are growing in the
country as is the perception as well as identification of the North, especially Hausa-Fulanis, as
the main obstacle to change. One typical presentation recently embodying this dual theme is a
lecture by Itse Sagay a university professor and distinguished lawyer. Tilde, supra note 397.
Sagay unveiled a double-decker approach to true federation by which Nigeria remains as a
country but under which every zone and nationality will operate within the type of federation
it prefers. Id. (quoting Itse Sagay. True Federalism in an Emerging Democracy: A Case Study
of Nigeria, Address at the at Le Meridien Eko Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria). He stated that the basis
for his double-decker theory is the lack of consensus among the six geopolitical zones on . . .
political restructuring. Id. While, he said, four zones are expressly demanding fundamental
restructuring of the country, all of the North, except for the Middle Belt (or the north central
zone), does not favor such restructuring. Id. (quoting Sagay, supra). Faced with these contrast-
ing wishes, he called for a:
double-decker or asymmetric federation, in which the north west and north eastern
zones and parts of the north central zone desiring it, can retain the centralized federa-
tion which we are operating under the 1999 Constitution, as between those zones and
the Federal Government . . . and a loose restructured federation which is currently
being demanded by the southern states as a minimum condition for their continued
voluntary existence as part of Nigeria for the states demanding it.
Id. (quoting Sagay, supra).
Professor Sagay says those in the Middle Belt or north central zone who choose could be-
come part of the loose restructured system southerners favor. Id. Sagay envisages that under
this loose federalism, the states involved will establish their own independent police forces, a
peoples militia, [conduct] their own population censuses and control their mineral resources
independently of the federal police, federal census, and federal resources. Professor Sagay as
precedent for his double-decker federalism, refers to the agreement reached in 1953 when the
North chose to delay its self-government status until 1959, three years after the South. Id.
(quoting Sagay, supra).
One analyst, Dr. Aliyu Tilde, himself a northerner who reflected on Sagays asymmetric
federation lecture, agreed with the Professor that the north has truly favored the status quo in
opposition to any restructuring. Few northern voices have really championed the cause of re-
structuring; instead, northerners have been equivocal, or rhetorical, or destructively critical of
the idea of a restructured federation. Something, somewhere, [maybe] a hangover of the civil
war, continue[s] to give the northern establishment the wrong notion that it is the custodian of a
unitary Federal Nigeria. Id. Dr. Tilde, however, indicates that those opposed to reform are
the few privileged northern elites who benefit from the current unitary federalism, not ordinary
northerners mired in poverty, illiteracy, injustice, and neglect and who are therefore dissatis-
fied with the status quo. Id. Also, he said, many northerners are tired of being targets of
frequent abuse and demonization. Id. Whatever is their disagreement, Nigerians must accept
that the argument of restructuring is very strong and convincing. Id. He talks about crises
arising from mutual distrust that have punctuated the political history of the country. Id. Be-
sides, he says,
[T]he periphery has grown too large for the corrupt and inefficient center to keep intact
without deterioration setting in. The Yoruba for example are over twenty-five million.
That is a big nation. What sense does it make to deny such a people autonomy of their
choice? Why should anyone today in Sokoto, Maiduguri or Makurdi raise a finger
against a new Biafra? What moral imperative or interest would compel the North to
save the oil[-]rich Niger delta if its people now strongly feel that they will be better
off with an autonomy that gives them exclusive control over their oil resources.
236 [VOL. 48:165

unceasingly low quality of Nigerian democracy fuels frustration

among groups who see in a democratic system the only avenue for the
pursuit of peaceful change.412
Seeking to reform rather than replace socialism, former Soviet
President Mikhail S. Gorbachev attempted to persuade the Baltic re-
publics that sought to separate from the Soviet Union that the expan-
sion of economic ties was a better option for them.413 But his logic did
not move these republics who maintained that the experience of other
countries shows that modern civilization is moving toward interna-
tional integration, but not by centralizing and subordinating.414 The
separatists logic prevailed and the Soviet Union broke up. Soviet
Russia not only supported, but also with its proxies, participated in the
Nigerian conflict on the Nigerian side.415 Mikhail Gorbachev, who led
the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, was better than post-war Niger-
ian leaders in that he tried but failed to reform the Soviet system;
Nigerian leaders dont try at all. The defects of federalism in the land,
coupled with the fact that peaceful change is not possible, leaves inde-
pendent statehood as the only viable hope for the protection of Igbo
individual and collective human rights.
Persuading the OAU on why its members should support sepa-
rate independence for Nigeria in 1967, the Biafran government con-
Id. Tilde called appeals to national integration monotonous and empty . . . dialectic[s] in
which the country can no longer take shelter. Id. Also proposals like state creation, federal
character, zoning, rotational presidency, and power sharing have become pretensions
that do not rise to any solutions. Id.
Pre-1999, the problem was thought to be with the mediocre leadership the North has
been accused of giving the nation. Today, with the woeful failure of Obasanjo in the
last four years, it is clear that such mediocrity is not a monopoly of the North anymore.
Apparently, something fundamental is wrong with the structure of the polity.
Id. He says it is not possible, given the prevailing liberal world order, for the nation to stop any
of its parts from seceding. Id. The world today will not sit and watch Nigeria kill a million of
its citizens and starve three times that figure. Never. We have seen stronger unions, like Yugo-
slavia, disintegrating explosively simply because it failed to readjust at the most appropriate
time. Id. Tilde says all that Nigerians need to start a true restructuring journey is dialogue. Id.
He concludes that [w]ith an ever-growing interest in the restructuring agenda nationwide . . .
the crisis over its necessity is almost over. Id. He advises Professor Sagay that his double-
decker idea is really unnecessary; so, he argues, the professor should allow the baby of restruc-
turing [to] wear a symmetrical face. Id. Growing calls in the country for restructuring and of
perceptions about groups standing on the way of change also reflect the growing impatience
among Nigerians regarding the status quo.
412. See KIRK-GREENE 1, supra note 86, at 15 (conveying Igbo assessment before the war, a
feeling still, unfortunately, valid today, regarding the 1964 elections as the final test before
despairing of constitutional, political, and economic reform, via democracy).
413. See Jeffrey Herbst, Global Change and the Future of Existing Nation-States, in SELF-
DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES, supra note 24, at 13, 28.
414. Id. (quoting an Estonian member of the Congress of Peoples Deputies).
415. See discussion supra Part III(B)(2)(iii).
2004] 237
Howard Law Journal
tended: No safeguards can work; none ever did.416 Three and a half
decades later, this statement appears to summarize the prospects for
protection of Igbo human rights in Nigeria. Just as socialism could not
be reformed in the Soviet Union, the Nigerian State stands no chance
to be reformed, to become a tool for the safeguarding of Igbo human
rights.417
VII. CASE FOR SEPARATE STATEHOOD AS AN

APPROPRIATE STRUCTURE FOR EFFECTIVE
SAFEGUARDING OF IGBO HUMAN
RIGHTS IN THE NEW CENTURY
Separate statehood holds the only hope for the maintenance of
Igbo human rights in the new century. The case for separate state-
hood as an appropriate structure made here revolves around two in-
terlocking arguments, namely: (1) the changing notion of self-
determination; and (2) the lack of any lingering objections to Igbo
independent statehood. I discuss these two issues in turn.
A. Changing Notion of Self-Determination and the Igbo Situation

1. Statement of the Traditional Doctrine
Self-determination is an idea as ancient as organized human soci-
ety, one that became international law doctrine in the twentieth cen-
tury. It is the collective manifestation of the universal human need to
identify with a group, to exercise control over ones affairs and fate,
and to promote ones own political, economic, and social well be-
ing.418 A statement of the traditional international law doctrine im-
plies that people who identify themselves as a nation should have the
right to form a state and exercise sovereignty over their affairs.419 As
Professor Goldstein elaborates, the doctrine is
416. Biafran Memorandum Circulated to Heads of State at O.A.U., supra note 200, at 171.
417. See Tilde, supra note 397, who points out that before 1999, the developmental problem
of the country was blamed on the mediocre leadership northern leaders provided, but that Gen-
eral Obasanjos woeful performance since 1999 evinces that mediocrity is not a monopoly of
the North anymore. Apparently, something fundamental is wrong with the structure of the pol-
ity. Id. It is true that there is only so much that one mortal leader can do if the structure is not
right from distortions arising from decades of incompetent leadership and bad policies. How-
ever, General Obasanjos main failure arises not from his performance in office, although that
also counts, but rather from his sheer inability, or unwillingness, to lay the ground for structural
change.
418. An-Naim, supra note 45, at 107, 109.
419. JOSHUA S. GOLDSTEIN, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 32 (3d ed. 1999).
238 [VOL. 48:165

a widely praised principle in international affairs [that is, however,]

generally secondary to the principles of sovereignty and territory
integrity, with which it frequently conflicts. Self-determination does
not give groups the right to change international borders, even
those imposed arbitrarily by colonialism, in order to unify a group
with a common national identity. Generally, though not always,
self-determination has been achieved by violence.420
Briefly, OAU and UN Charters and other international human
rights instruments provide that all peoples have the right to self-
determination, but at the same time stipulate that sovereignty and ter-
ritorial integrity of countries are inviolable.421 They endorse a right of
self-determination to support dependent peoples struggles against
colonialism, but restrict that right to only the colonial cases.422 If in
theory the principle of self-determination extended to all people, in
practice it could be exercised only by those under colonial rule.423
This occurrence led many countries in Africa to believe that indepen-
dence from formal colonial rule satisfies the right of their populations
to self-determination, as well as to individually and collectively
resis[t] claims for secession by various [ethnic groups or] peoples as a
means to achieving self-determination.424 Under the traditional doc-
trine, along with African and UN practices that support it, a tension
exists between self-determination and sovereignty that the interna-
tional community tends to resolve in favor of sovereignty.
2. Mounting Dissatisfaction with the Traditional Doctrine

Dissatisfaction built quickly with the traditional international law
doctrine of self-determination following its institution in the UN sys-
tem after World War II. This can only be expected of a doctrine,
which, as previously indicated, would even let stand boundaries im-
posed arbitrarily by colonialism.425 As early as 1973, Rigo Sureda
equated the doctrine of self-determination with the notion that gov-
420. Id.; see also UMOZURIKE, supra note 23, at 53 (stating that self-determination is not a
juggernaut that overrides all other rights, but rather must have regard to other equally funda-
mental principles, such as sovereignty and territorial integrity).
421. RAYMOND C. TARAS & RAJAT GANGULY, UNDERSTANDING ETHNIC CONFLICT: THE
INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION 51 (2d ed. 2002).
422. BUCHANAN, supra note 261, at 20.
423. Id.
424. An-Naim supra note 45, at 113. Professor Mazrui appropriately calls the OAU conven-
tion against tampering with colonial boundaries taboo of officially sanctioned secession.
Mazrui, supra note 267, at 28.
2004] 239
Howard Law Journal
ernment should be based on the will of the people . . . and people not
content with the government of the country to which they belong
should be able to secede and organize themselves as they wish.426
Professor Buchanan complained that the traditional doctrine rec-
ognizes only fully sovereign states but accords individuals and minor-
ity groups only cultural, as opposed to political, status.427 He argues
that some of the countries, such as Britain and Belgium, who helped
write the traditional doctrine were motivated by self-interest: They
feared that recognition of a broad right of self-determination would
be tantamount to endorsement of a general right to secede for every
ethnic group428 and they sought to avoid fueling numerous separa-
tist movements within their countries.429 Buchanan calls for experi-
mentation with new forms of semi-autonomy or limited
sovereignty.430
Other observers, statesmen, and scholars alike, who have pointed
out the inadequacies of the traditional doctrine include Lee C.
Buchheit, Prince Hans Adams II of Liechtenstein, and the late Julius
Nyerere of Tanzania. In his pioneering study, Buchheit determined
that natural rights do not include the right to secession. He was, how-
ever, persuaded that a highly qualified right of secession had emerged
under positive international law. Buchheit concluded the evolution
of an international legal recognition of secessionist self-determination,
although cautious and uniformly conservative, is nevertheless percep-
tive.431 For him, [T]he only really inescapable requirement for a
legitimate claim to self-determination is the existence of a genuine
self wanting to control its own political destiny.432 Although of the
view that secession is not a panacea for all the ills of the social condi-
tion, Buchheit maintains that [i]t makes no sense to uphold the integ-
rity of a State when it no longer satisfies the fundamental purposes of a
political association.433
Prince Adams laments that [p]eople everywhere are told that
they have the right to self-determination. Nevertheless, if this right is
426. A. RIGO SUREDA, THE EVOLUTION OF THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION: A STUDY

OF UNITED NATIONS PRACTICE 17 (1973).
427. BUCHANAN, supra note 261, at 20.
428. Id.
429. Id.
430. Id. at 21.
432. Id. at 223 (discussing the Parochialists model of seccession).
433. Id. at 225 (emphasis added).
240 [VOL. 48:165

suppressed by a sovereign state, the international community supports

territorial integrity until a war of independence is successful. As in
the past, the entire problem is settled on the battlefield.434 One of
the most memorable criticisms of the traditional doctrine, like Prince
Adamss, from the world of government and diplomacy, is the
Tanzanian governments statement recognizing Biafra delivered by
President Nyerere.
Nyerere conveyed that the purpose of society and of all political
organizations, is the service of man435 and that states are designed to
safeguard the life and liberty of their inhabitants.436 According to the
respected statesman, the powers and machinery of the state may never
be turned against a whole group because of racial and related
prejudice; where this becomes the case, the victims have the right to
take back the powers they have surrendered and to defend them-
selves by creating another instrument for their protection in the form
of another state.437 Nyerere believed that a rejected people must
have the right to live under a different kind of arrangement which . . .
secure[s] their existence.438 He said national unity ceases to exist
when a group of people become convinced that they are rejected and
that there is no longer any basis for unity between themselves and the
rest of the country.439
Yet other criticisms of the traditional doctrine come from Francis
Deng and his colleagues, Thomas Frank, Professor Umozurike,
Professors Raymond Taras and Rajat Ganguly writing together, and
434. Prince Hans Adams II of Liechtenstein, Foreword to SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEO-

PLES, supra note 24, at ix, xi.
435. Tanzania Recognizes Biafra, supra note 192, at 211.
436. Id. at 208-10. President Nyereres statement recognizing Biafra is deservedly praised as
one of the most striking state documents of our time. See Diamond, supra note 77, at n.13.
437. Tanzania Recognizes Biafra, supra note 192, at 209; see also id. at 210. Nyereres
thought here as elsewhere in this statement, tracks the natural rights doctrine symbolized in
the American revolutionary tradition as codified in the American Declaration of Indepen-
dence. The document is world famous for its proposition that governments exist to preserve the
life and liberty of its citizens. As this human and fundamental rights masterpiece proclaims,
governments became instituted among Men to ensure the inalienable Rights of individuals,
including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, and
whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right
of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Governments, laying its
foundation on such Principles and organizing its Power in such Form, as to them seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, para. 2 (U.S. 1776).
438. Tanzania Recognizes Biafra, supra note 192, at 209.
439. Id. at 210. Nyerere believes it is absurd to kill in the name of unity and that [t]here
is no unity between the dead and those who killed them . . . no unity in slavery or domination.
Id.
2004] 241
Howard Law Journal
Professor An-Naim. Deng, a scholar and former diplomat, along with

his collaborators, argued for the reconstruction of the doctrine of sov-
ereignty in a manner that tempers the doctrine with responsibility in
matters of human rights and humanitarian assistance.440
Their point is that sovereignty has evolved in our time to pre-
scribe democratic representation and to justify outside interven-
tion when a humanitarian crisis arises due to a failure to meet this
standard, and that a government should not claim sovereignty if it is
not able to establish legitimacy by meeting minimal standards of
good governance and responsibility for the security and general wel-
fare of its citizens.441 Frank advanced a broad principle of entitle-
ment to equality.442 According to him, self-determination is a right
applicable to any distinct region in which the inhabitants do not enjoy
rights equal to those accorded all people in other parts of the same
state.443
Professor Umozurike contends that concern for human rights,
and intervention meant to protect those rights, do not negate the prin-
ciple of non-interference in a countrys domestic affairs because
breaches of human rights, especially gross breaches, are taken out of
domestic jurisdiction.444 He also wrote that self-determination need
not irresistibly lead to independence or secession, inasmuch as it can
also be satisfied through relations like federalism that conform with
the wishes of the people,445 leaving open the implication that sepa-
440. See generally Francis M. Deng, Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility: Basis for
International Humanitarian Action, in AFRICA IN WORLD POLITICS, supra note 27, at 353 [here-
inafter Deng, Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility]; SOVEREIGNTY AS RESPONSIBILITY:
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN AFRICA (Francis M. Deng et al. eds., 1996) [hereinafter SOVER-
EIGNTY AS RESPONSIBILITY].
441. Deng, Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility, supra note 440, at 357. Deng and his
collaborators elaborate compellingly that:
Sovereignty is not merely the right to be undisturbed from without, but the responsibil-
ity to perform the tasks expected of an effective government. . . .
The obligation of the state to preserve life-sustaining standards for its citizens must
be recognized as a necessary condition of sovereignty. . . .
The state has the right to conduct its activities undisturbed from the outside when
it acts as the original agent to meet the needs of its citizens. . . .
If the obligation is not performed, the right to inviolability should be regarded as
lost, first voluntarily as the state itself asks for help from its peers, and then involunta-
rily as it has help imposed on it in response to its own inactivity or incapacity and to the
unassuaged need of its own people.
SOVEREIGNTY AS RESPONSIBILITY, supra note 440, at xviii.
442. See generally THOMAS M. FRANCK, THE POWER OF LEGITIMACY AMONG NATIONS 168
(1990).
443. Id. at 168. Without doubt, Franck meant external self-determination through separate
statehood rather than internal self-determination short of secession.
445. Id. at 53.
242 [VOL. 48:165

rate independence is possible where those relations are lacking or ex-

ist only in name.
Professors Taras and Ganguly, in their joint text on ethnic con-
flict, contend that [w]here a national government does not operate
for genuine mutual advantage and discriminates against or exploits
certain groups, then this in effect voids the states claim to the terri-
tory in which the victims reside.446 Mere inequalities do not trigger
this moral argument in favor of secession. Rather, they explained, the
argument applies when ruling elites skew benefits to favor some and
disadvantage others in unjustified ways.447
Last but not least, Professor An-Naim notes regrettably that
[a]lthough external self-determination in the sense of liberation from
traditional colonialism, is firmly established and largely achieved, in-
ternal self-determination within existing nation-states, and against
what might be called local colonialism, remains problematic, espe-
cially in Africa.448 He thinks it ironic that the independent nation-
state, once perceived as the essential prerequisite for achieving the
peoples right to self-determination, is now viewed as a major obsta-
cle to realization of that right,449 leading him to warn that unless Af-
rican leaders correct this situation by responding to legitimate
demands for self-determination, they should expect to be treated by
their peoples as colonial states to be combated in struggles and wars
of liberation.450
The point of these contentions and elaborations, tied with the
changes in governmental practice discussed below in the next section,
is that future debate on self-determination will need to take account
of the fact that state-shattering, far from being an unusual event, may
become routine in the future.451 Contrary to every expectation, the
forces of globalization have not slowed down campaigns for external
self-determination or independent statehood in the world.452 Instead,
the evolution of an international legal right to secession already evi-
dent in 1978 when Buchheit wrote his study on self-determination453
446. TARAS & GANGULY, supra note 421, at 60 (citations omitted).

447. Id.
449. Id. at 106.
450. Id.
451. Herbst, supra note 413, at 30.
452. Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, Introduction to SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES, supra
note 24, at 6 [hereinafter Danspeckgruber, Introduction].
2004] 243
Howard Law Journal
has become more pronounced today. Not only do powerful forces in

the international political economy, as Professor Herbst points out,
fully support the geographers view of a world with an increasing
number of small nation-states,454 but the impact of the Diaspora in
the struggle for self-determination in their homeland has grown be-
yond what they used to be.455
With the Cold War over and a new world order unfolding, it is
about time the international community changed its attitudes and
strategies toward self-determination, developed during the era of the
Cold War.456 American revolutionary tradition gives a people the
right to alter or abolish a government destructive of their rights and
replace it with one built on such principles and organization of power
that as to them . . . seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happi-
ness.457 Self-determination draws its moral and political force from
the idea that, like democracy, government should be based on the
consent of the governed.458 If it still means anything, the doctrine
signifies that only the nation itself has the right to determine its
destiny . . . no one has the right forcibly to interfere . . . to destroy
schools and other institutions, to violate its . . . customs, to repress its
language, or curtail its rights . . . to arrange its life on the basis of
autonomy and that it has the right to complete secession, to name
these necessary features.459
3. The Changing Doctrine as Governmental Practice

Although the movements toward doctrinal change articulated
above in the previous section are impressive, even more heart-warm-
ing are the changes emanating from governmental practice. These
changes include unprecedented acts of power devolution short of
complete independence, instances of external self-determination
outside the state, and growing constitutionalization of the right to self-
determination.
454. Herbst, supra note 413, at 30.

455. Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, A Final Assessment, in SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES,
supra note 24, at 339 (pointing out [n]ever before in history has the impact of people in the
Diaspora on the struggle for autonomy in their homeland been as immediate, extensive, and
direct as today.) [hereinafter Danspeckgruber, Final Assessment].
456. See Danspeckgruber, Introduction, supra note 452, at 6.
457. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, para. 2 (U.S. 1776).
458. See SUREDA, supra note 426, at 17; An-Naim, supra note 45, at 108.
459. ANTONIO CASSESE, SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES: A LEGAL REAPPRAISAL 14 n.7
(1995) (quoting J. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, in MARXISM AND THE NATIONAL
AND COLONIAL QUESTION: A COLLECTION OF ARTICLES AND SPEECHES 18-19 (1941)).
244 [VOL. 48:165

One country that is illustrative of the power devolution trend is

Britain where local self-rule of major constitutional import had been
approved for all of the three component nations, namely Wales, Scot-
land, and Ireland, which, with England, make up the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.460 For example, the new as-
semblies granted to Scotland and Wales, which became effective from
the year 2000, have authority in a multiplicity of issue-areas that in-
clude education and culture, health, economic development and plan-
ning, and police protection or law enforcement.461 Amazingly, in
Britain, as in the former Yugoslavia, group-beneficiaries of these new
autonomies insist on complete independence but without being
branded secessionists as would probably have been the case if these
campaigns had occurred in non-European regions. In Britain, the
Scottish Nationalist party regards the creation of the new assembly as
a first step on the road to a fully independent Scotland,462 while in
Serbia-Montenegro, Montenegro perceives confederation as a prelude
to full independence in 2006.463
These critical measures of self-determination stand in contrast to
Nigeria, which, despite its portraiture as a federal government, leaves
most governmental powers centralized in the hands of the national
government. These experiments in internal self-determination in Brit-
ain are both impressive and instructive for two reasons. First, Britain
is a unitary system under which most power theoretically resides with
the national or central government. In Britain, the national govern-
ment has all power and has the discretion to grant or withdraw pre-
rogatives and power to local authorities.464 Second, besides being
creator of the patchwork country Nigeria, Britain played a critical role
in the defeat of Biafra.465
Instances of external self-determination through secession in the
aftermath of the Cold War include the division of the former Soviet
Union into fifteen separate parts; the breakup of the former Federa-
tion of Yugoslavia into five independent countries; the division of for-
460. THEEN & WILSON, supra note 66, at 20. The Union Jack, Britains national flag, over-
laps the crosses of three peoples who once had separate political units, namely, England and
Wales whose patron saint is St. George, Scotland whose patron saint is St. Andrew, and Ireland
whose own patron saint is St. Patrick. Id.
461. See id. at 22 tbls.2-4.
462. Id. at 22.
463. See Misha Savic, New Beginning as Yugoslavia Ceases to Exist, CHI. TRIB., Feb. 5,
2003, at 4.
464. THEEN & WILSON, supra note 66, at 38-39.
465. See discussion supra Part III(B)(2)(iii).
2004] 245
Howard Law Journal
mer Czechoslovakia into two countries; admission of East Timor,

previously part of Indonesia, into independent statehood; and the as-
cension of Eritrea, an erstwhile province of Ethiopia, into indepen-
dent statehood.
Eritrea became independent with the co-operation of the gov-
ernment in Ethiopia.466 Africa lags behind the rest of the world in
instances of self-determination through separate statehood. This is of
little import, however. Eritrea is enormously and critically significant
because it strikes the taboo of officially sanctioned secession,467 and
is a direct slap in the face to the OAU convention regarding the invio-
lability of colonial boundaries. Slowly but surely African colonial
boundaries are, in the post-Cold War era, moving toward being modi-
fied.468 If, as Professor Clapham poignantly reminds us, the mighty
Soviet Union breaks up into fifteen different fragments, there is no
way in which an artificial African state can hold together unless most
of its people want it to.469
One country in Africa that illustrates the trend of constitutional-
ization of the right to self-determination is Ethiopia, which, in 1994,
adopted a constitution stipulating: Every Nation, Nationality and
People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination,
including the right to secession.470 One commentary on the provi-
sion states that the argument for exercise of this right is based on the
understanding that the nation-state exists to serve the people and not
vice-versa. If any nation, nationality, or people strongly and consist-
466. Mazrui, supra note 267, at 28.

467. Id.
468. See id. (describing federalism, multi-party systems, and related governmental organiza-
tional features, which he says are replacing political conventions that, in the past, helped to
preserve inherited borders).
469. Christopher Clapham, Democratisation in Africa: Obstacles and Prospects, 14 THIRD
WORLD Q. 423, 437-38 (1993). Clapham argues that [t]he old African state, based on the
hierarchies of rule inherited from European colonialism, is on its way out, and any state struc-
ture succeeding this dying formation must today rely more on popular support than in the past.
Id. at 437. The choice open for African governments today, he believes, is between acquisition
of popular legitimacy (meaning being more democratic) or collapse into anarchy. Id. at 437-38.
Political conventions used to maintain non-democratic governments in the past that Clapham
said have now eroded to the point of no return, include foreign support and attachment to inher-
ited artificial boundaries. Id. at 437.
470. ETH. CONST. art. 39, para 1; see also FASIL NAHUM, CONSTITUTION FOR A NATION OF
NATIONS: THE ETHIOPIAN PROSPECT 53 (1997) (praising the right as part of the broader right to
self-determination, the ultimate extension and expression of the right to self-determination,
and a guarantee for sustainable peace and a solid foundation for unity based on equality and
mutual respect).
246 [VOL. 48:165

ently feels its interest[s] are not being properly served by the existing
status quo, it should be able to change it.471
The Ethiopian constitution sets forth elaborate procedures de-
signed to facilitate exercise of this right by qualified nationality groups
and to afford groups who remain in the union a voice in the decision
relating to any exit. Laying down legal-constitutional measures for
the exercise of the right to secession smooths out possible disruption
that may emanate when a group leaves an existing union to build its
own separate statehood.472 The measures also meet Professor An-
Naims requirement of not making secession easy but at the same
time not so difficult that it is unachievable.473 Just like for Britain, the
constitutional innovations coming from Ethiopia are impressive and
enormously instructive. Ethiopia, under Emperor Haile Selassie, ad-
vocated respect for the inviolability of inherited colonial borders and
had no difficulty in supporting Nigeria in opposition to Biafra.474 To
move from this position to not only support independence for Eritrea
but also to insert in its own constitution a provision stipulating the
right of secession as a collective right is a real turnaround in policy
toward self-determination for the formerly feudal society.
Ethiopia is only part of a broader wind of constitutional change
that has been sweeping through Africa since the 1990s.475 In cooper-
ating to let Eritrea go and then leading the way in the institutionaliza-
tion of constitutional procedures for self-determination for nationality
groups all the way to full independence, Ethiopia also represents an
important part of those constitutional changes. The arguments made
in support of the right to secessionsuch as that the state exists to
serve peoplecall to mind the language of the American Declaration
of Independence476 and the word of countries like Tanzania several
471. NAHUM, supra note 470, at 53.

472. See BUCHHEIT, supra note 252, at 241 (stating that the effects of a successful secession
had to be measured both on the remaining state as well as on the international system in
general).
474. See KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 13-15. Communique Issued at End of O.A.U.
Consultative Mission Visit, reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 173-74; O.A.U. Res-
olution on Nigeria (Sept. 1967), reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 172-73.
475. See Philip C. Aka, Democracy, Human Rights, and the New Constitutionalism in Africa
4-5 (Oct. 23-25, 2003) (unpublished paper presented at the International Law Weekend 2003,
American Branch of the International Law Association, on file with author); see also Julius O.
Ihonvbere, Constitutions Without Constitutionalism?: Towards a New Doctrine of Democratiza-
tion in Africa, in TRANSITION TO DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA, supra note 268, at 137,
137-52 (showing how constitutionalism is taking a center stage in the overall agenda for demo-
cratic renewal in Africa).
2004] 247
Howard Law Journal
decades ago in recognizing Biafra as an independent country.477 Al-

though it took Ethiopia decades and a devastating civil war with Eri-
trea to finally embrace this wisdom, that the change occurred at all is
nevertheless significant. Another country, this time European, illus-
trating the trend of the constitutionalization of the right to self-deter-
mination is Liechtenstein, which has proposed a draft amendment
providing, in pertinent part:
Each community has the right to secede. Secession is to be regu-
lated by law or on a case-by-case basis by contract. Secession must
be approved by a majority of Liechtenstein citizens resident in the
community in question. In the case a majority approves secession
the reigning prince shall have the right to order within thirty days a
vote of reconsideration six months later.478
What is so impressive about Liechtenstein, with its advocacy of
self-determination through self-administration, is that it is a micro-
state with a population of 300,000 people and an area of 200 kilome-
ters479 for which governmental defense of any campaign by communi-
ties for self-determination with the response of non-viability would
have been compelling. These changes in governmental practices are
among the powerful forces in the global political economy that Profes-
sor Herbst says fully support the geographers view of a world with
an increasing number of small nation-states.480
4. Beyond the Traditional Doctrine: Survey of Professor An-

Naims Proposal for Mediating the Tension Between
Sovereignty and Self-Determination
Professor An-Naim has recently made an impressive contribu-
tion to the discussion at hand, and thusly, his writing deserves some
thorough analysis.481 The piece is also remarkable for the thought it
contributes on how to resolve the tension between sovereignty and
self-determinationwhat An-Naim portrays as competing claims to
477. See discussion supra notes 436-39 and corresponding texts.

478. Danspeckgruber, Final Assessment, supra note 455, at 352 (quoting ch. 1, art. 2, of the
Liechtenstein Draft Convention on Self-Determination Through Self-Administration). Text of
the Draft Convention is contained in SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES, supra note 24, at 382-
92. For commentary on the Draft Convention, see id. at 365-81.
479. See BRUCE RUSSETT ET AL., WORLD POLITICS: THE MENU FOR CHOICE 495 app. (6th
ed. 2000).
480. Herbst, supra note 412, at 30. Many of the countries that became independent in the
post-Cold War period are small. For example, Croatia has a population of 4.7 million, Slovenia 2
million, and Eritrea 3.5 million. Id. at 26.
481. See generally An-Naim, supra note 45, at 105-25.
248 [VOL. 48:165

self-determination.482 An-Naims proposal revolves around two

identifiable points: (1) recognition of the existence of an international
legal right to self-determination; and (2) the need and necessity for
international actionand the role of the international communityin
mediation of conflicting claims to self-determination.
a. International Legal Right to Secession
An-Naim believes, through his reading of African and UN

human rights documents, that an international legal right to seces-
sion exists.483 Specifically, he said the right of peoples to self-deter-
mination contained in the ACHPR as well as in the UN Charter and
human rights documents includes internal self-determination at the
domestic level, as well as the right of external self-determination
through separate statehood in appropriate cases.484 He disagrees with
the idea that the right to self-determination stops with internal self-
determination.
[T]he right to self-determination is exercisable within, as well as
through, the nation-state. The nations or peoples constituting the
Nation of the nation[-]state need not challenge and overthrow that
state to satisfy their right to self-determination. Nevertheless, it
must remain conceivable that such challenge with a view to estab-
lishing a separate nation[-]state may be justified under certain
circumstances.485
A right to secession should be maintained for use as a last resort
when all efforts at establishing the appropriate constitutional order
have failed.486 Put differently, an ethnic group should be entitled to
external self-determination through secession if its government fails to
protect its right to substantive internal self-determination through ap-
propriate constitutional measures.487 Professor An-Naim argues
that the underlying logic and moral rationale of traditional
decolonization cannot end by the achievement of formal
independence.488
Rather, just
482. Id.
483. See id. at 121.
484. Id. at 108.
485. Id.
486. Id. at 122.
487. Id. at 121.
488. Id.
2004] 249
Howard Law Journal
[a]s colonized people(s) are entitled to the self-determination of for-

mal independence from a colonial power, so they should be entitled
to self-determination through secession from the new independent
state if they are denied internal self-determination. In this way, the
international legal right of minorities to secession can arise if they
are denied internal self-determination at the domestic constitutional
level.489
He points out correctly that although the Declaration of Princi-
ples affirms the doctrine of sovereignty and territorial integrity of ex-
isting states, the affirmation is not absolute since it makes sovereignty
contingent upon states conducting themselves in compliance with the
principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.490 The
Declaration is important because it is a most authoritative interna-
tional document that codifies important principles of international law
and deals with the issues those principles tackle in the post-colonial
context.491
Although Professor An-Naim espouses an international legal
right to secession, he wants that right maintained for use as a last
resort when all efforts at establishing the appropriate constitutional
order have failed.492 His position is for the combination of an ulti-
mate threat of secession and the difficulty of its achievement to pro-
vide an incentive to all parties to a majority/minority conflict to
develop and implement the necessary constitutional mechanisms to
achieve substantive internal self-determination for all segments of the
population.493 As he sees it, the threat of secession should reinforce
the obligation of the leadership of a country to allow its population
the maximum degree of internal self-determination, while the diffi-
culty of achieving secession should strengthen the cooperation of all
segments of the population in building national unity.494
Put simply, Professor An-Naim does not want the right to self-
determination made too difficult that it becomes unachievable or else
there will be no incentive for a government to allow its population the
maximum degree of internal self-determination; on the other hand, it
should not be too easy to achieve so that groups are not tempted to
489. Id.
490. Id. at 114 (interpreting the Declaration of Principles, Princ. (e), para. 7).
491. See generally C. Don Johnson, Note, Toward Self-DeterminationA Reappraisal in the
Declaration on Friendly Relations, 3 GA. J. INTL & COMP. L. 145-63 (1973).
493. Id. at 121.
494. Id. at 106.
250 [VOL. 48:165

use that right illegitimately. Countries need to find some ways to bal-
ance the legitimate demand of separate identity against the equally
legitimate claim of national integration. Whether through federalism
or any other devise of autonomy a country chooses, the basic objec-
tive should be to afford groups equal opportunity in political, eco-
nomic and social matters at the national level and equality in pursuit
of cultural identity.495 Where these objectives are achieved, there will
be no objective justification for secession since secession is not an end
in itself, but rather a means to these objectives.496 There is no one
best formula for these things and Professor An-Naim does not advo-
cate any such universal prescription, but the basic criterion is what he
denominated the golden rule of reciprocity: one should place the
self in the position of the other person; whatever the self expects or
demands must be conceded to the other person.497 But articulating
and implementing an appropriate constitutional measure, he said, will
necessarily be predicated upon a fundamental appreciation of the le-
gitimate collective rights of an ethnic or minority group involved.498
b. Importance of International Action in the Protection of Human

Rights
Professor An-Naim advocates a more active role for the interna-
tional community in safeguarding human rights. He said the funda-
mental choice facing the international community is between ensuring
satisfaction of peoples right to internal self-determination and risking
the difficult-to-contain-or-confine conflict that might result from de-
mands for secession.499 Conflicts know no national boundaries,500 he
said. Not only that, but seemingly local conflicts can also as well en-
danger the vital interests of other states.501 He says the interna-
tional community can help prevent this through international
political accountability and economic pressure on offending gov-
ernments,502 specifically by impressing on national governments that
they cannot get away with denying their own populations internal
self-determination. What he means, he says, is not direct unilateral
495. Id. at 118.

496. Id.
497. Id.
498. Id.
500. Id. (No civil war can be relied on to remain within the boundaries of any state.).
501. Id.
502. Id.; see also OKAFOR-OBASI, supra note 19, at 96-113.
2004] 251
Howard Law Journal
intervention, but rather concerted and coordinated efforts at media-

tion and influence through multilateral action of regional and interna-
tional organizations, such as the [UN] and the Organization of African
Unity, to achieve and maintain internal self-determination for all the
peoples of each country.503
International and regional organizations or other mutually ac-
ceptable mediators can provide or devise the forum for negotiations
and where needed, the personnel of these organizations or other mu-
tually acceptable third parties can act as mediators or facilitators of
dialogue and negotiation.504 Where all efforts to achieve internal self-
determination fail, however, the international community should not
deny an oppressed minority its right to external self-determination
through secession,505 and therefore, the opportunity to secure their
own individual and collective rights with the help of the international
community.
5. The Changing Doctrine and Igbos
Recent developments discussed above relating to the changing

doctrine, including changes in governmental attitude toward self-de-
termination, both support and strengthen the case for Igbo statehood.
Those recent external developments are then in turn significantly rein-
forced by a Nigerian internal development. That internal develop-
ment, forming some of the backdrop for the discussion of Igbo human
rights in this Article, is the changed context of the Biafran defeat more
than three decades ago, symbolized by the rise, under General
Obasanjos presidency, of a growing movement in the country and in
the Diaspora for the actualization of Biafra.506 General Obasanjo
was the military commander who received the Biafran surrender in
1970. A recent Igbo campaign for separate statehood took off in May
2000 when the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State
of Biafra (MASSOB) embarked upon a program aimed at resur-
recting the defunct Republic of Biafra, although agitation for Biafra
503. An-Naim, supra note 45, at 120-21.

504. Id. at 116.
505. Id. at 121.
506. The meaning of actualization includes to realize something in action or portray that
something realistically. See THE AMERICAN HERITAGE COLLEGE DICTIONARY 14 (4th ed.
2002). Therefore, organizations seeking to actualize Biafra appear to believe Biafra never actu-
ally died.
252 [VOL. 48:165

actually preceded that date.507 In a petition it sent to the UN, MAS-

SOB indicated that:
The said Biafra is currently struggling to gain independence from
Nigeria. We, therefore, under the present circumstance, humbly ap-
ply to be admitted, registered or treated, as the case may be, as an
unrepresented nation in any of the organs of the United Nations,
having renounced our Nigerian nationality.508
The organization stated that its campaign for actualization of Bi-
afra would be non-violent and non-exodus, meaning that Igbos would
not have to leave their jobs and investments outside Igboland this
time, as they did in 1966-67.509 Elaborating on its actualization strat-
egy, MASSOB pointed out that Independence is different from over-
throwing of government. Independence goes with negotiation. We
are negotiating Biafras independence.510
The rise of MASSOB and other Biafran actualization organiza-
tions inside and outside Nigeria is a response to the terror, cruelty,
failure and utter lack of humanity of the Nigerian State.511 General
Obasanjos response to the peaceful and nonviolent agitation for inde-
pendence is that [t]here is no peaceful way of getting out of Nigeria;
he insists Nigerians can find a peaceful way of living together in har-
mony.512 To underscore this inflexible position, his government has
507. For example, the Igbo pan-nationalist organization, Ekwe Nche, based in Chicago,
adopted a constitution on February 19, 1999 that has as one of its objectives, striv[ing] for the
peaceful actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra. See 2.5.1 EKWE NCHE ORG. CONST.
(on file with author).
508. Obiora Chukwumba, Tension in the Land, TELL (Lagos), Nov. 22, 1999, at 17.
509. Toyi Olori, Igbos Resurrect Biafra Secessionist Bid, INTERPRESS NEWS SERVICE, May 29,
2000 (on file with author).
510. Id.
511. Anonn Is Anall, Biafra: A Tragedy Set to be Repeated? IRISH DEMOCRAT, at http://
www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/columns/anonn-is-anall/biafra/ (last updated July 30, 2002). For a de-
tailed discussion of the secession conundrum in the country, see Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999,
supra note 58, at 246-52.
512. See Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 248 & n.238 (citing Muyiwa
Adeyemi & Isa Abdulsalami, We Can Find Peaceful Living, THISDAY (Lagos), Dec. 7, 2001).
General Obasanjo is aware that the peaceful coexistence he counsels has little chance of happen-
ing in Nigeria and he overlooks the advice of scholars like Professor An-Naim that although
desirable, national unity and integration are not things pursued at any cost, certainly not at the
cost of achieving personal liberty and economic, political, and social justice for all segments of
the population, or at the cost of securing collective and individual rights. An-Naim, supra note
45, at 106, 122. Another An-Naim counsel is instructive here: Unless African governments
learn to respond to the legitimate demands for self-determination in their countries, they should
expect to be treated by their peoples as colonial states to be combated in struggles and wars of
liberation. Id. at 106. At other times, the President has simply maintained, in seeming oblivi-
ousness to the relentless centrifugal pulls inside the country, that [t]oday, no serious-minded
Nigerian is talking of breaking Nigeria up. Nigerians today have hope, and when you have hope,
you have a lot. Nigerians today feel that they can get justice. Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999,
2004] 253
Howard Law Journal
repressed and brutalized groups inside Nigeria like MASSOB

campaigning for the actualization of Biafra,513 while leaving un-
touched northerner politicians who, by replacing the countrys secular
legal system with Muslim Sharia code, have engaged in an act of effec-
tive secession from the country.514
supra note 58, at 252 & n.267 (citing Talking Point, Interview by Robin Lustig with Olusegun
Obasanjo, President, Nigeria, Abuja, Nigeria (Feb. 16, 2002)).
513. See Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra note 58, at 248.
514. Detailed discussion on this topic can be found in Aka, Nigeria Since May 1999, supra
note 58, at 240-46. In a widely publicized lecture delivered in Fall 2002, General Ibrahim
Babangida, military ruler from 1987 to 1993, criticized General Obasanjo for showing a poverty
of leadership in dealing with escalating ethnic nationalism in the country and promoting na-
tional integration. See General Ibrahim B. Babangida, Ethnic Nationalities and the Nigerian
State: The Dynamics and Challenges of Governors in Plural Nigeria, Address Delivered at Na-
tional Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies 6 (Nov. 22, 2002) (on file with author). He said
that during his period in office he was conscious of and convinced, about the necessity for
thoroughgoing and systematic reforms of our economy, society and political process, in order to
assist in creating a better space for the multiple nationalities of the country, arguing that this
was the basis for the economic reforms and democratization of the political process he under-
took between 1985 and 1993. Id. He blamed the manifestations of ethnic tensions that have
arisen under General Obasanjo on the reactive excesses of the government and the selective
injustice meted out to certain ethnic nationalities by the government. Id. Babangida also be-
lieves the federal character doctrine is not being properly applied under President Obasanjo.
The former dictator stated that the 1999 Constitution is filled with numerous imperfections
and needs reformation to meet the processes and expectations of democracy. Id. He would
want [t]he entire constitutional order reviewed, if necessary via a well-organized national con-
ference of ethnic nationalities. Id. In fact, he believes the Nigerian State needs a complete
reconstitution so as to endow it with a modicum of neutrality, objectivity and justice in its
operation. Id.
The presentation provides some insights on some of the problems highlighted in this Article
regarding the ill structure of the Nigerian system and the violations of Igbo human rights that go
on within that system. The former dictator sees numerous imperfections with the 1999 constitu-
tion that need to be corrected, and he believes that the federal character doctrine is not being
properly applied under General Obasanjo. Id. He also thinks the Nigerian state needs complete
reconstitution, disclosing that going back to the period of his days in office from 1985, he had
become convinced about the necessity for a thoroughgoing and systematic reforms of the
countrys politics, economics, and society. Id. General Babangida also validates violations of
Igbo human rights that still go on in Nigeria. Id. In addition to the illegal and unconstitutional
application of the federal character doctrine (which militates against safeguard of Igbo rights)
that he spoke about, General Babangida also inveighs against the Obasanjo governments met-
ing out selective injustice to certain ethnic nationalities. Id. Igbos top the list of those un-
named ethnic nationalities. Although his diagnosis is on point, General Babangida is a huge part
of what is wrong with Nigeria and its leadership. He is notorious for the fake transition-to-
democracy program, ending in the annulment of comparatively free and fair elections, he un-
veiled from 1987 until 1993 when he left office involuntarily. See generally TRANSITION WITH-
OUT END: NIGERIAN POLITICS AND CIVIL SOCIETY UNDER BABANGIDA (Larry Diamond et al.
eds., 1997). His attempt at economic reforms, like with his political reforms, was also half-
hearted and a failure. See Chukwuma F. Obidegwu, Nigeria: Priorities and Prospects for the
1990s, in PROSPECTS FOR RECOVERY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA 126, 126-61
(Aguibou Y. Yansane ed., 1996). There are also aspects of the speech that leave the reader
unpersuaded regarding General Babingidas sincerity concerning his latter-day enamor for fun-
damental restructuring. He regrets that so-called foundational issues, matters at the federal-
ist foundations of the Nigerian State considered no go areas when he was in office, have
become worrisomely re-invented in recent times. Id. A true reformer convinced of the neces-
254 [VOL. 48:165

Although the current Igbo campaign for separate statehood is,

like the one of 1967, the result of Nigerian local factors,515 the cam-
paign also reinforces Danspeckgrubers argument that the intensifi-
cation of globalization has not diminished the frequency . . . of
struggles for self-determination and secession.516 The rise of Igbo or-
ganizations, in the U.S. and other foreign countries, committed to the
actualization of Biafra also validates his point about the growing im-
pact by people in the Diaspora on the struggle for autonomy in their
homeland, which Danspeckgruber argues is as immediate, extensive,
and direct as [n]ever before in history.517 The Biafran conflict
from 1967 to 1970 divided the United States and the international
community.518 A similar conflict today will have broader conse-
quences, given the larger and ever-growing community of Igbo immi-
grants today in the United States and other countries. This
occurrence also reinforces Professor An-Naims argument about the
necessity for international action in mediating conflicting claims to
self-determination. In a post-Cold War era characterized by self-de-
termination through self-administration,519 searches for new legal ar-
rangements,520 and constitutionalization of the right to self-
determination,521 even stronger unions than Nigeria, like Yugoslavia,
sity of restructure for a colonial state like Nigeria would not declare any issue a no go area.
Also, although as a private citizen he would not mind convocation of a national conference of
ethnic nationalities to decide on the future of the country, something for good measure which
sets him apart from General Obasanjo, who does not believe in such a conference, the support is
tentative and conditional. Id. So, for all his latter-day verbal commitment to restructuring, I
would still rank Babangida among those leaders of the country who, like Obasanjo, are allergic
to restructuring and are content with mere tinkering of the Nigerian system. Such flinching
commitment to structural reform could have been among the reasons why his political and eco-
nomic reforms failed dismally. Last but not least, Babangida was a major part of the reason why
the countrys entire constitutional order, by his word, needs review today. His ascension to
office via a military coup, his dictatorial and unaccountable leadership style, and his long
unelected stay in office spanning eight whole years, deprived the country of much-needed oppor-
tunity for democratic-constitutional growth.
515. See Biafran Memorandum Circulated to Heads of State at O.A.U., supra note 200, at
171 (maintaining that [e]very Federation that has broken up in history has broken up because
of some identifiable local cause and not in consequence of an external factor).
516. Danspeckgruber, Introduction, supra note 452, at 6.
517. Danspeckgruber, Final Assessment, supra note 455, at 339.
518. See generally STREMLAU, supra note 207.
520. Danspeckgruber, Final Assessment, supra note 455, at 352; Wolfgang Danspeckgruber,
Self-Determination and Regionalization in Contemporary Europe, in SELF-DETERMINATION OF
PEOPLES, supra note 24, at 165, 196; see also discussion supra notes 460-61 and accompanying
text (pointing to instances of power devolution short of complete independence).
521. See discussion supra note 470-78 and accompanying text.
2004] 255
Howard Law Journal
have disintegrated because they failed to readjust at the most appro-

priate time.522
B. Lack of Any Articulable Objections to Igbo Separate

Statehood
The following are four possible objections to Igbo separate state-
hood, stated in reverse order for their lack of persuasiveness, or ease
of refutability: (1) the Igbo nation as it exists today is a creature of
British colonialism (the No Britain, No Igbo argument), (2) Balkan-
ization, (3) the concern that separation will be violent, and (4) the
concern that an Igbo state will not be protective of human-rights.
These objections, none of which is tenable, are discussed in turns.
1. Argument That the Igbo Nation as It Exists Today Is a

Creature of British Colonialism (the No Britain, no Igbo
Argument)
The first possible objection to Igbo separate statehood is that the
Igbo nation as we know it today is a product of British colonial rule in
Nigeria; in other words, but for British entry into Nigeria, there would
be no Igbo nation today seeking conference of independent statehood
for the consummation of human rights. This argument is the least
compelling among the possible objections to Igbo statehood, however,
and is accordingly the most easily disposable.
Britain did not create the Igbo nation. Before British entry into
what became Nigeria, Igbos had a history of independent existence
that goes back at least [5,000] years.523 One of the most notable
facts of Igbo history, as Professor Isichei recounted in her history of
the Igbo people, is its length and continuity.524 This objection
would still not have been compelling if Britain had created the Igbo
nation. What is important is whether a nation exists today that is con-
sidered a people within the meaning of African and UN human
rights instruments, and therefore entitled to the right to self-determi-
nation either internally within a nation-state or externally through
separate statehood, not who brought it into existence.
What critics who make this argument actually meant to convey,
as earlier indicated in this Article, is that current pan-Igbo identity
522. See Tilde, supra note 397.

524. Id.
256 [VOL. 48:165

and the use of the Igbo ethnic label are externally imposed phenom-
ena that came with British colonial rule.525 Igbos beg[a]n to think of
themselves as a unified people following British entry into Nigeria,526
and British intervention violently extended the categories through
which the Igbo perceived their world.527 This information is immate-
rial, however, because it has nothing to do with whether an Igbo na-
tion is considered a people within the meaning of the applicable global
human rights principles. Although it is difficult to see how a nation
can exist and not have some consciousness of its existence, the need
for pan-Igbo identity or the use of any ethic label (necessary for
groups to differentiate themselves in competition for scarce resources
with one another)528 was created by British intervention and would
not have been necessary if Britain had not come into Nigeria and
lumped together ethnic groups which before then did not live together
under one national roof.
2. The Balkanization Argument

A more popular and seemingly more compelling objection to sep-
arate Igbo existence than the no Britain, no Igbo argument is Bal-
kanization. The root of the word comes from the partition of the
Balkans in the early twentieth century; the term means the division of
a region or territory into small, often hostile, units.529 Organizations
(such as the OAU) and countries that sided with Nigeria during the
war, in opposition to Biafra, used this argument.530 Balkanization em-
beds a domino theory: B will happen if A occurs as the chain
reaction in Professor Isicheis statement conveys.531 Although a little
better than the No British, No Igbo argument, the Balkanization
argument is also easily disposable for a number of reasons.
First, the increased evolution of an international legal recogni-
tion of secessionist self-determination532 marked by the recognition

526. Phoebe V. Ottenberg, The Changing Economic Position of Women Among the Afikpo
Ibo, in CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN AFRICAN CULTURES, supra note 67, at 205.
528. See CHAZAN ET AL., supra note 5, at 109.
529. See THE AMERICAN HERITAGE COLLEGE DICTIONARY 104 (3d ed. 1993).
530. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 247 (Many feared that if
secession was successful it would set off a chain reaction of conflicts all over Nigeria, which
would dwarf the tragedies of 1966 in their horror.).
531. See also Government of Tanzania, Memorandum on Biafras Case, reprinted in KIRK-
GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 436-40 for President Nyereres elaboration of the theory in relation
to Nigeria and Africa.
2004] 257
Howard Law Journal
of separate existence for countries in the world, not a few of them

small, reduces the persuasiveness of the argument. Second, as the
Biafran government argued in 1969, Balkanization can give to prece-
dent a force that it does not possess given that [e]very Federation
that has broken up in history has broken up because of some identifi-
able local cause and not in consequence of an external factor.533 Al-
though save perhaps for the four African countries that recognized
Biafra,534 the OAU ignored this rebuttal; the point is as valid today as
it was in 1969: Internal factors play a major role in many national con-
flicts, and question the domino theory embedded in Balkanization.
Third, many African countries were smaller than Biafra and the
OAU appeared to be more concerned about maintaining Africas co-
lonially-handed boundaries than about Balkanization per se. Fourth,
Balkanization was never a major factor for the Western powers that
supported Nigeria in opposition to Biafra. Rather, as Professor
Isichei herself indicated, these powers were moved by a complex set
of economic calculations, and a realistic assessment of who was likely
to win, more than by any concern about Balkanization.535
3. The Concern That Separation Will Be Violent

Critics for whom the first two objections are not workable may
yet see in this third argument a basis upon which to raise an objection
against a separate state for protection and consummation of Igbo
human rights. A previous attempt to achieve that separation ended
violently leading to horrible human rights atrocities against Igbos.536
Also, successful secession is something influenced by the power rela-
tions between the contending parties537 which as in 1967, may not
favor Igbos.
Separate statehood does not have to be something pursued by
force, however. Within recent times, the separation in the former Yu-
goslavia was associated with force; so also was Eritrean independence
accomplished after decades of war with Ethiopia. But the division of
the former Soviet Union into fifteen separate countries was a peaceful
event. The same peacefulness characterized the separation of the
533. Biafran Memorandum Circulated to Heads of State at O.A.U., supra note 200, at 171.
534. The countries are Gabon, Ivory Coast (today Cote dIvoire), Tanzania, and Zambia. A
non-African country, though Black too, that recognized Biafra was Haiti in the Caribbean.
258 [VOL. 48:165

Czech and Slovak peoples once housed together under one national
roof as Czechoslovakia. In short, as Professor Goldstein said, self-
determination is not always violent, but rather something that
sometimes can be achieved peacefully and nonviolently.538
Like these instances of peaceful independence, Igbo separation
will be achieved peacefully and non-violently rather than by any force
of arm. Igbo secession (and the attendant civil war) did not precipi-
tate the killings and other atrocities against Igbos that took place be-
tween 1967 and 1970; rather, the course of events was the other way
round in the sense that the massacres of Igbos in 1966 precipitated the
secession and civil war. Also, despite the human catastrophe the se-
cession brought upon the Igbo nation, the secession and resultant civil
war would still have been necessary if, as some Igbo leaders have ar-
gued, they averted an extermination of the Igbo people which would
have occurred in their absence.
Finally, while it may be true that a successful political divorce539
is influenced by the power relations between the contending parties,
power does not have to mean force, but rather something that goes to
the merit of a particular groups case for separate existence. Even in
1967, Biafra never used force. The Igbos never chose war to achieve
or back their independence but rather had a civil war forced on
them.540 There is much less reason today to resort to any force. In-
stead, independence is something the various parties involved can
peacefully negotiate, with the international community as facilitator as
was the case in Eritrea and East Timor, where a UN plebiscite or ref-
erendum preceded separation. It is instructive that all the organiza-
tions today advocating Igbo independence understand that this is an
issue that will be resolved through negotiation. Thus, MASSOB indi-
cates that it has no plans to overthrow the Nigerian government: In-
dependence goes with negotiation. We are negotiating Biafras
independence.541
Besides indicating that their campaign will be peaceful and nonvi-
olent, organizations advocating Igbo separate statehood also insist

539. The expression comes from BUCHANAN, supra note 261 (cover title of book).
540. See discussion supra Part III(B)(2)(d); IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 10. The Biafran war
was for Igbos simply a war of resistance. As Dr. Ransome-Kuti said, referring to the Nigerian
government, You cannot kill tens of thousands of a people, take over the government with arms
and expect them to stay around like sitting ducks especially after unilaterally abrogating a nego-
tiated settlement. Ransome-Kuti, supra note 250, at 48.
541. Olori, supra note 509.
2004] 259
Howard Law Journal
that it will be non-exodus, quite mindful of the refugee nightmare

the mass exodus of 2 million dispossessed Igbos fleeing from northern
Nigeria created for Igbos and the world in 1967.542 No violence will
attend separation more than the violence that has occurred and is still
occurring now, absent separation. Still on the place, or lack of it, of
force in campaigns for self-determination, one lesson coming from the
latest Igbo campaign for independence, arising after almost thirty long
years after the war for Biafra, is that force suppresses but does not kill
the legitimate urge of a people to control their political destiny.543
Negotiations preceding separation should address the reasonable
fears of parties opposed to separation and the possibility of accommo-
dating those fears through, for example, access to natural resources or
access to the sea for landlocked areas without such access. As
Buchheit pointed out in his important study, the theoretical objection
to including separate existence within the doctrine of self-determina-
tion tends to fizzle out [o]nce the political fears engendered by seces-
sion are assuaged.544 Negotiation may also involve creative
techniques designed to ease the pain of separation that could start, for
example, with devolution of powers through a political structure re-
sembling a confederal system as Serbia-Montenegro adopted.545
Even with their justified bitterness toward Nigeria, Biafrans after
their separation from Nigeria in 1967, released a memorandum on
proposed future association with the rest of Nigeria on terms worked
out in such a manner that they do not compromise or detract from the
sovereign rights of the states concerned.546 The memorandum recog-
nized that common experience arising from numerous years of ties
between Biafra and prospective states in Nigeria provides a sound
and realistic basis for a fruitful relationship.547 There is no reason

543. The campaign today inside and outside Nigeria for an independent Igbo state calls to
mind General Ojukwus uncanny word from exile to the effect that Biafra cannot be destroyed
by mere force of arms given the crystallization of the cherished hopes of a people who see in
the establishment of this territory a last hope for peace and security that the Biafran phenome-
non represented. See Ojukwus Call From Exile, reprinted in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at
456.
546. Biafran Memorandum on Proposed Future Association (Aug. 29, 1967), reprinted in
KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 163.
547. Id. See also the press release of the Zambian government which, in recognizing Biafras
independence, importantly stated:
We hope that the establishment of this Republic will now allow Nigeria and the people
of Biafra to work out a better frame-work for cooperation . . . to ensure a better plat-
form for more realistic unity among themselves . . . to live in peace and to foster Afri-
260 [VOL. 48:165

the Igbos could not extend this gesture of future cooperation again, if
need be.
Another issue that negotiations should address will be the iden-
tity of the self to be determined. Old Biafra consisted of ethnic
groups other than Igbos but excluded Igbos in the former Mid-West-
ern Region across the Niger who remained in Nigeria. The current
Igbo campaign for separate self-determination involves Igbos across
the two sides of the Niger and does not affect non-Igbos who may
prefer to remain in a reshaped Nigeria. In short, the geography of Old
Biafra may be adjusted in the course of negotiation to separate any
group(s) other than Igbos who choose to remain a part of Nigeria.
An-Naim said Biafra had all the qualifications for independent state-
hood except external sponsorship by an important power or powers.
The current campaign has even stronger qualification. Igbos have
grown beyond the mere 8 million they were in 1967. Today their pop-
ulation in Nigeria alone, not including the substantial number of indi-
viduals in the Diaspora, stands at over 30 million. Thus viability is
even better. Also, the possibility of irredentism which would have oc-
curred if Old Biafra had survived is out of the question today since
Igbos from both sides of the Niger are engaged in the campaign, un-
like in 1967, when one section of the Igbo nation, Delta Igbos, re-
mained in the Mid-West as part of Nigeria.
The argument supporting inclusion of non-Igbos in Old Biafra
was a most valid one considering that: (1) with Igbos, these minority
non-Igbos comprised Eastern Nigeria, and (2) all Easterners, Igbos
and non-Igbos alike, were victims of the massacres of 1966. Because
of their cultural affinities or similarities,548 the marauding northerner
tormentors had difficulty distinguishing non-Igbo Easterners from
Igbos. While the cultural affinities still remain, since the end of the
war in 1970, non-Igbo Easterners have lived a different experience
can Unity in the spirit of brotherhood and mutual cooperation for the benefit of all the
peoples of that region.
Zambia Recognizes Biafra, (Statement by Zambian Foreign Minister, May 20, 1968), reprinted in
KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 220, 221.
548. See Elbert et al., supra note 91 (referring to Eastern Nigeria as peoples for centuries so
intricately interrelated, culturally, socially, and economically and contiguous they may be de-
fined as an ethnological cultural area); see also OBrien, supra note 170 (stating that non-Igbos in
Eastern Nigeria share common values with and pride[d] themselves on the same qualities of
egalitarian manners, thirst for education, commercial enterprise, self-reliance, and technical in-
genuity Igbos were known for.) Despite these similarities, Igbos and only Igbos formed the
target of the killers venomous attacks, except in instances when these human rights violators
erroneously missed their targets.
2004] 261
Howard Law Journal
from the human rights deprivation Igbos have endured. The limita-
tion of the current campaign to only Igbos also precludes the problem
of minority domination, often a rebuttal issue in campaigns for self-
determination. New Biafra, as designed, would rank about the most
homogeneous countries in Africa. The complicated issues that may be
involved in negotiation for separate statehood suggest the necessity
for some kind of dialogue to deal with those issues549and an admin-
istration, not the current Obasanjo regime, ready and willing to initi-
ate such a dialogue. Criteria have evolved today for testing the
validity of a claim for separate existence for human rights purposes
that Igbos duly satisfy.550 Opposition to legitimate campaign for inde-
pendence by entities who choose to remain in what is left of Nigeria
will create hard feelings that might in the future impede good neigh-
borliness, and the cultivation of friendly relations among independent
countries.
4. Concern That an Igbo State Will Not Be Protective of Human

Rights
If none of the three factors above provides objection to deny
Igbos a separate state for the protection of their human rights, critics
may choose to seek that objection in the contention that Igbos would
not be able to protect their own human rights. In other words, they
would argue that an Igbo state will not be more protective of human
rights than the country from which the Igbos exited. After all, they
would say, Africa is a continent rife with human rights violations and
549. See Tilde, supra note 397 (stating that all Nigerians need to start a . . . restructuring
journey is dialogue).
550. These criteria are: (1) the degree of internal cohesion and self-identification of the
group, (2) the nature and scope of the claim, (3) the underlying reasons for the claim, and (4) the
degree of deprivation of basic human rights. See An-Naim, supra note 45, at 114. The higher
the degree of internal cohesion and self-identification of the people, the greater their historical
claim to separate identity; the more they are deprived of their basic human rights under the
present nation state, the stronger would be the case for secession. Id. at 114. Where secession
appeared justified in a given case, as Professor An-Naim counsels, the principle of self-determi-
nation would require granting it and recognizing the new state; where clearly not justified or of
doubtful validity, alternative arrangements for satisfying claims for self-determination ought to
be considered. Id. at 113. Secession will be clearly justified in the Igbo case and, as we have
argued in this Article, nothing less than complete independence from Nigeria will work to safe-
guard Igbo human rights.
The additional conditions An-Naim lays out are also met here. Igbos will form a clear
majority in a new Igbo state, and there is no case of any minorities being dominated since Igbos
alone will form the state. External sponsorship is a matter outside their control that the interna-
tional community will see to, or something that will not be necessary if Nigerian authorities
cooperate, as Ethiopia did in the Eritrea situation, to facilitate the accomplishment of separate
statehood.
262 [VOL. 48:165

an independent Igbo state would still be part of the African landscape.

Pointing to practices like slavery, the slave trade, subjection of individ-
uals to outcast status and other acts of discrimination, and twin-kill-
ings, they would argue that traditional Igbo societies knew little
respect for human rights or, as one scholar put it, that the human
rights concept did not exist in traditional Igbo societies.551 Although
this is the most compelling of all the possible objections examined
here, this argument is also untenable.
A major point in the objection here would be Igbo participation
in the slave trade. Although some Igbo elites, like other African
elites, undoubtedly participated in the obnoxious trade in humans, the
trade was a very complex process involving a very wide variety of
power relationships and participants whose interests and responses . . .
changed with the course of time.552 Specifically, the slave trade was a
one-sided relationship founded and maintained on [European] threat
of force553 which one-sidedness Igbo and African collaboration does
not minimize. As Davidson discloses, Europe dominated the con-
nection, shaped, and promoted the slave trade, and continually turned
it to European advantage and to African loss.554
Some of the evils of the pre-colonial period, such as human sacri-
fices, trial by ordeal, and rampant kidnapping, were also practices that
have been associated with the slave trade.555 Also, our understanding
of human rights was not as well developed as it has become today
under the United Nations system. A number of nebulous issues an
analyst must confront in applying human rights to the period would
include whether Igbos have a state or government in the regular sense
to which a concept of human rights could be properly applied, and
whether matters such as the (mis)treatment of slaves in slave vessels
during the course of the middle passage were something that could be
attributed to African governments. What about the circumstances
that made individuals seized as slaves to give their lives rather than be
551. See OSITA C. EZE, HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA, ch. 1 (1984).

552. MBokolo, supra note 145, at 201.
553. Id. at 202.
554. Id. (quoting DAVIDSON, supra note 146); see also KARENGA, supra note 371, at 396, who
properly views the reference to African collaboration in the slave trade as blaming the victim,
noting importantly: No one morally sensitive claims Jews are responsible for the holocaust
based on the historical evidence of Jewish collaborators. How then are Africans indicted for the
collaborators among them?
555. ISICHEI, GENESIS OF A RELATIONSHIP, supra note 65, at 59-60.
2004] 263
Howard Law Journal
slaves in a foreign land? Were these not matters outside the control of
Igbo and other African governments?
In contrast to the pre-colonial period, the nearly three years of
civil war from 1967 to 1970, ironically, holds out a better test-case of
how an independent Igbo government would have handled human
rights. Evidence from this brief period of independent statehood556
suggests that an Igbo government conducted itself well with respect to
the observance of human rights. Time magazine, in 1968, called Biafra
a war time democracy with a functioning judiciary, a ministerial
executive government and a civil service, where decisions were fre-
quently made based on the advice of a consultative assembly of el-
ders.557 This contrasted with Nigeria where a military regime, whose
authority to govern the Biafran government is contested,558 held sway
all by itself without the existence of any similar legislative consultative
body sharing powers.559 Briefly, Biafra is impressively democratic and
efficient for a country at war.560 Biafra uncaged and unleashed the
immense creative potentialities of the Igbo. The war years marked
the sudden technological transportation of an African people to the
world stage as General Ojukwu recounts compellingly in the following
excerpt:
The war has come and gone but we remember with pride and hope
the three heady years of our freedom. These were the three years
when we had the opportunity to demonstrate what Nigeria could
have been even before 1970. In three years of war, necessity gave
birth to invention. During those three years, . . . in one heroic
bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge
from know-how. We built bombs, we built rockets, we designed and
built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets, we guided
them far, we guided them accurately. For three years blockaded
without hope of imports, we maintained engines, machines and
technical equipment. We maintained all our vehicles. The state ex-
tracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol at the back of
their gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained
556. Debate exists regarding whether, under international law, Biafra entered the commu-
nity of nations, as an independent state, for a period before leaving it again under duress. Com-
pare C. OKEKE, THE EXPANSION OF NEW SUBJECTS OF CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL LAW
THROUGH THEIR TREATY MAKING CAPACITY 165 (1973) (saying yes), with David A. Ijalaye,
Was Biafra at Any Time a State in International Law? 65 AM. J. INTL L. 551, 559 (1971)
(arguing contra).
557. Nigerias Civil War, supra note 80.
560. Nigerias Civil War, supra note 80.
264 [VOL. 48:165

them under heavy bombardment. Despite the heavy bombardment,

we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to main-
tain the record for the busiest airport on the continent of Africa.
We spoke to the world through a telecommunication systems engi-
neered by local ingenuity, the world heard us and spoke back to us.
We built armored cars and tanks. We modified aircraft from train-
ers to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In three years of
freedom we had broken the technological barrier. In three years we
became the most civilized, the most technologically advanced black
people on earth. We spun nylon yarn, we developed new seeds for
food and medicines . . . .561
Biafra held a potential for democracy that few African countries
at the time possessed. One document that symbolized that promise of
governmental performance was the Ahiara Declaration, General
Ojukwus blueprint for a novel political system that marked Biafra
apart from Nigeria.562 Though portrayed as a work of expediency,563
and the future it confidently crafted was criticized as less than real,564
[n]evertheless, not many states have found time and inclination, amid
the desperation of a losing war, to debate the nature of the just soci-
ety, and ways in which it might be attained.565 At the least, the dec-
laration embodied the hopes and aspirations of many in Africa who
saw Biafra as a first step to establishing a more just society on the
continent.566
Concern that a group may violate their own human rights if given
the opportunity to safeguard those rights themselves would never be a
good reason to deny them the separate state necessary for the protec-
tion and consummation of those rights. We would never know
whether Igbos would be capable of safeguarding their own human
rights today unless they had an opportunity to protect those rights. At
561. IGBOKWE, supra note 88, at 17-18 (quoting Emeka O. Ojukwu, Nigeria: The Truths
Which are Self-Evident, SUNDAY MAG. (Lagos), Feb. 22, 1994.
562. An abridged text of the address is contained in KIRK-GREENE 2, supra note 170, at 376-
93.
563. See AKPAN, supra note 178, at 116-32.
564. KIRK-GREEN 2, supra note 170, at 115 (stating that this major policy speech marking
Biafras third anniversary stood at once for a revised long-term social objectives of the Biafran
revolution, a new commitment to a ten-year war, and a philosophical charter for a renascent and
finally triumphant Biafra).
565. ISICHEI, HISTORY OF THE IGBO PEOPLE, supra note 4, at 249; see also Diamond, supra
note 77, at n.10 (Although children could no longer attend school, and the universities had been
sacked, the people, impoverished from top to bottom, held seminars from one end of the country
to the other, inquiring minutely and with pristine, unprejudiced curiosity into the meaning and
the outcome of their struggle.).
2004] 265
Howard Law Journal
any rate, Igbos are entitled to protect their rights in a separate Igbo
state if they are people within the meaning of African and UN
human rights instruments, and if they meet the other requirements for
that statehood, including deprivation of basic individual and collective
rights, and a genuine self, ready and willing to determine its
destiny.567 In sum, although compared to all the others, this last ob-
jection appears to present the most weighty argument, the evidence in
favor of separate statehood here is overwhelming.568
CONCLUSION
More than three decades after the civil war, violations of Igbo
individual and collective human rights still persist in Nigeria and no
adequate institutions of political structure exist in the country for safe-
guarding these rights. The only hope for effective safeguard of Igbo
individual and collective human rights in the new century is separate
statehood, achieved non-violently through the cooperation of the
Nigerian government and with the help of the international commu-
nity; only a government of the Igbo people, for the Igbo people, and
by the Igbo people can protect Igbo human rights. The international
law doctrine of self-determination has changed such that today sover-
eignty poses no barrier to Igbo separate statehood and no articulable
objections against that independence exist. Besides safeguarding Igbo
human rights, independent existence apart from Nigeria will bring fi-
nal resolution to the Igbo legitimate campaign for self-determination,
sown in 1967, that has gone on intermittently ever since while contrib-
uting in no small way to global peace.
567. See BUCHHEIT, supra note 252, at 223.

568. See AN-NAIM, supra note 45, at 113.
266 [VOL. 48:165

1/22/2015 PhilipC.Aka:RobertH.McKinneySchoolofLaw:IndianaUniversity
IndianaUniversity
RobertH.McKinneySchoolofLaw
MeetOurFaculty&Staff
PhilipC.Aka
ProfessorofPoliticalScience,ChicagoState
University
AdjunctProfessor,IURobertH.McKinney
SchoolofLaw

EMail:paka@iupui.edu
Education
B.A.(magnacumlaude),1985,EdinboroUniversityofPennsylvania
M.A.,1987,UniversityofNorthTexas
Ph.D.,1991,HowardUniversity
J.D.,1994,TempleUniversity
LL.M.(summacumlaude),2008,IndianaUniversityatIndianapolis
Bio
ProfessorPhilipC.AkaiscurrentlyanS.J.D.candidateatIUMcKinneySchoolofLaw,aswell
asanadjunctprofessor.HeteachesPoliticalScienceatChicagoStateUniversityinChicago,IL.
Publications
BooksandChapters
*"AfricanAmericanReligion."InReligionandPoliticsinAmerica,editedbyFrankJ.Smith.
SantaBarbara,CA:ABCCLIO(forthcoming2016).
*"AssessingJudicialIndependenceunderNigeria'sFourthRepublicsince1999."InTheRule
ofLawandDevelopmentinAfrica,editedbyJohnMukumMbaku.Trenton,NJ:AfricaWorld
Press(forthcoming2015).
*BenNwabuezeandAfricanIntellectualTradition.InTheIgboIntellectualTradition
(PalgraveMacmillan,GloriaChuku,ed.,2013),chap.8,pp.223248.
*"PoliticalAnalysisontheGenesisofNEPAD."InNeoLiberalism,Interventionism,andthe
DevelopmentalState:ImplementingtheNewPartnershipforAfricasDevelopment(Africa
WorldPress,BenjaminF.Bobo&HermannSintimAboagye,eds.,2012),chap.3,pp.5591.
*"IgboIntellectualsandIgboSelfDetermination:TheCaseofProfessorBenO.Nwabueze."In
EmergentTheoriesandMethodsinAfricanStudies:EssaysinHonorofAdieleE.Afigbo
http://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/facultystaff/profile.cfm?Id=401 1/5
(AfricaWorldPress,ToyinFalola&AdamPaddock,eds.,2009),chap.29,pp.36999.
*TheNeedforanEffectivePolicyofEthnicReconciliation,InNigeriaintheTwentyFirst
Century:StrategiesforPoliticalStabilityandPeacefulCoexistence(AfricaWorldPress,E.Ike
Udogu,ed.,2005),chap.3,pp.4167.
LawReviewandJournalArticles
*"HumanRightsinNigeria'sExternalRelations:Exigency,Methods,andRebuttable
Objections."BuffaloHumanRightsLawReview(forthcoming2015).
*"TheCountryReportsonHumanRightsPracticesandU.S.HumanRightsPolicyina
ChangingWorld."PerspectivesonGlobalDevelopmentandTechnology,Vol.14(2015):238
260
*"'ShapingTheirBetterCharacter':ReligioninAfricanAmericanPoliticsintheAgeof
Obama."RutgersJournalofLawandReligion(forthcomingFall2014).
*"JudicialIndependenceunderNigeria'sFourthRepublic:ProblemsandProspects."
CaliforniaWesternInternationalLawJournal(forthcomingFall2014).
*PoliticalFactorsandEnforcementoftheNursingHomeRegulatoryRegime(withLucinda
M.DeasonandAugustineHammond),24JournalofLaw&Health143(spring2011)(lead
article).
*"CulturallyandLinguisticallyCompetentPublicServicesinanEraofEnglishOnlyLaws"
(withLucindaM.Deason),34IntlJournalofPublicAdmin.291306(2011).
*"AssessingtheImpactsofPoliticalFactorsonNursingHomeRegulation"(withLucindaM.
DeasonandAugustineHammond),17JournalofPublicManagementandSocialPolicy331
(spring2011)(leadarticle).
*"MeasuringtheImpactofPoliticalIdeologyontheAdoptionofEnglishOnlyLawsinthe
U.S."(withLucindaM.DeasonandAugustineHammond),13TheScholar:St.Mary'sLaw
ReviewonMinorityIssues128(fall2010)(leadarticle)
*"NEPADandtheMovementforPopularParticipationinDevelopment(MPPD)inAfrica,"3
HumanRights&GlobalizationLawReview79148(fall2009/spring2010).
*"CulturallyCompetentPublicServicesandEnglishOnlyLaws,"53HowardLawJournal53
131(fall2009)(withLucindaM.Deason)
*"AffirmativeActionandtheBlackExperienceinAmerica,"36ABAHumanRightsMagazine
810(fall2009)
*AssessingtheConstitutionalityofPresidentGeorgeW.BushsFaithBasedInitiatives,"9
JournalofLawinSociety53110(Wint.2008).
*"ProfessorBenO.NwabuezeandtheStruggleforIgboSelfDetermination,4SlovenianLaw
Rev.934(Dec.2007)(leadarticle).
*"CorporateGovernanceinSouthAfrica:AnalyzingtheDynamicsofCorporateGovernance
ReformsintheRainbowNation,33NorthCarolinaJournalofInt'lLaw&Commercial
Regulation21992(Wint.2007).
*"TheSupremeCourtandtheChallengeofProtectingMinorityReligionsintheU.S.,"9The
Scholar:St.MarysLawReviewonMinorityIssues343408(Spring2007).
*TechnologyUseandtheGayMovementforEqualityinAmerica,35CapitalUniversity
LawReview665742(Spring2007).
*TheSupremeCourtandAffirmativeActioninPublicEducation,withSpecialReferenceto
theMichiganCases,2006BYUEducation&LawJournal195(2006)(leadarticle).
*"AnalyzingU.S.CommitmenttoSocioeconomicHumanRights,39AkronLawReview417
63(2006).
*AssessingtheImpactoftheSupremeCourtDecisioninGrutterontheUseofRaceinLaw
SchoolAdmissions,42CaliforniaWesternLawReview147(Fall2005)(leadarticle).
*"ProspectsforIgboHumanRightsinNigeriaintheNewCentury,48HowardLawJournal
165266(fall2004).
*HumanRightsasConflictResolutioninAfricaintheNewCentury,11TulsaJournalof
Comp.&IntlLaw179209(fall2003).
*Nigeriasince1999:UnderstandingtheParadoxofCivilRuleandHumanRightsViolations
inNigeriaunderPresidentOlusegunObasanjo,4SanDiegoIntlLawJournal20976
(2003).
*TheMilitary,Globalization,andHumanRightsinAfrica18NewYorkLawSch.Journalof
HumanRights361438(summer2002).
*TheDividendofDemocracy:AnalyzingU.S.SupportforNigerianDemocratization,22
BostonCollegeThirdWorldLawJournal22579(spring2002).
*TitleVII,AffirmativeAction,andtheMarchTowardColorBlindJurisprudence,11Temple
Pol.&CivilRightsLawReview161(fall2001)(withEmmanuelO.Iheukwumere)(lead
article).
*AfricaintheNewWorldOrder:TheTroublewiththeNotionofAfricanMarginalization,9
TulaneJournalofIntl&Comp.Law187221(spring2001).
*Education,EconomicDevelopment,andReturntoDemocraticPoliticsinNigeria,18J.of
ThirdWorldStudies2138(spring2001)(thisarticlewontheLawrenceDunbarReddick
AwardfortheBestArticleonAfricapublishedin2001intheJournalofThirdWorldStudies).
*Nigeria:TheNeedforanEffectivePolicyofEthnicReconciliationintheNewCentury,14
TempleIntl&Comp.LawJournal32761(fall2000).
*Education,HumanRights,andthePostColdWarEra,15NewYorkLawSch.Journalof
HumanRights42148(spring1999)(withGloriaJ.Browne).
*TheMilitaryandDemocratizationinAfrica,16JournalofThirdWorldStudies7186
(spring1999).
EssaysandReports
*TeachingConstitutionalLawinU.S.FourYearCollegesandUniversities.Forewordto
GloriaJ.BrowneMarshall,TheConstitution:MajorCasesandConflictsxixiv(Pearson
LearningSolutions,3ded.,2011).
*"IntroductoryNotetotheChineseGovernment'sNationalHumanRightsActionPlan2009
2010,"48InternationalLegalMaterials84145(2009)(pieceisrepublished,without
footnotes,inILPost,epublicationoftheAmericanSocietyforInternationalLaw,Issueof
July15,2009).
BookReviews
*CriminalLawReformandTransitionalJustice:HumanRightsPerspectivesforSudan
(Ashgate,LutzOette,ed.,2011),59AfricaToday13137(Summer2013).
*JohnIliffe,Obasanjo,NigeriaandtheWorld(JamesCurrey,2011),58AfricaToday12529
(Fall2011).
*SaraE.Davies,LegitimizingRejection:InternationalRefugeeLawinSoutheastAsia(Leiden
&Boston:MartinusNijhoff,2008),8JournalofAfricanandAsianStudies18791(2009).
*TukumbiLumumbaKasongo,DynamicsofEconomicandPoliticalRelationsbetweenAfrica
andForeignPowers:AStudyinInternationalRelations(Westport,CT:Praeger,1999),17
JournalofThirdWorldStudies24754(fall2000).
*AfricanForeignPolicies,ed.StephenWright(Boulder,CO:WestviewPress,1999),28
PerspectivesonPoliticalScience232(fall1999).
OtherPublications
*TerroristThreatinthe21stCentury:AGlobalSecurityProblem.InCounterterrorism:From
theColdWartotheWaronTerror:Volume1:CombatingModernTerrorism(19682011)
(PraegerSecurityIntl,FrankShanty,ed.,2012):3036.
*WaronTerror.InCounterterrorism:FromtheColdWartotheWaronTerror:Volume1:
CombatingModernTerrorism(19682011)(PraegerSecurityIntl,FrankShanty,ed.,2012):
3641.
*China.InCounterterrorism:FromtheColdWartotheWaronTerror:Volume1:
CombatingModernTerrorism(19682011)(PraegerSecurityIntl,FrankShanty,ed.,2012):
7276.
Presentations
"AdvancingHumanRightsinaPostAuthoritarianSystem:NigeriaundertheFourth
Republic."PaperPresentedatthe85thAnnualConferenceoftheIndianaAcademyofSocial
Sciences(IASS),AndersonUniversity,Anderson,IN46012,October10,2014.
TheCountryReportsonHumanRightsPracticesandU.S.HumanRightsPolicyina
ChangingWorld."PaperPresentedatthe12thAnnualGlobalStudiesAssociation
Conference,LoyolaUniversityofChicagoSchoolofLaw,Chicago,June68,2014.
"TowardanEffectiveHumanRightsPolicyforNigeriabyMid21stCentury:PreviewofTwo
ViableScenariosfortheIgbo."PaperPresentedatthe12thAnnualInternationalConferenceof
theIgboStudiesAssociation,DominicanUniversity,RiverForest,IL,May2224,2014.
"InfluenceofHumanRightsinNigerianExternalRelations."PaperPresentedatthe72nd
AnnualConferenceoftheMidwestPoliticalScienceAssociation,Chicago,IL,April36,2014
"JudicialIndependenceunderNigeria'sFourthRepublic:ProblemsandProspects."Paper
Presentedatthe23rdAnnualConferenceoftheCenterforAfricanPeaceandConflict
Resolution(CAPCR),CaliforniaStateUniversity,Sacramento,CA,April24,2014
"OriginandEvolutionofHumanRightsinNigeria'sExternalRelations."PaperPresentedat
theAnnualMeetingoftheNationalCouncilofBlackPoliticalScientists(NCOBPS),
Wilmington,DE,March14,2014.
"SparksofHumanRightsinNigeria'sExternalRelations."PaperPresentedattheS.J.D.
Colloquium,IndianaUniversityRobertH.McKinneySchoolofLawIndianapolis.Feb.6,
2014
"HumanRightsinNigeria'sExternalRelations."PaperPresentedattheCollegeofArtsand
Sciences'(CAS)Forum,ChicagoStateUniversity,February13,2014
ReligionandRaceinAmericanPolitics:ValorizingtheContributionsof(Black)Muslimsto
theCivilRightsMovement.LectureinCommemorationofBlackHistoryMonth,Ahmadiyya
MuslimCommunityMosque,Chicago,IL,Feb.22,2014
"SmallPlaceClosetoHome:TheJudiciaryandHumanRightsinNigeria."PaperPresentedat
theCollegeofArtsandSciences'(CAS)Forum,ChicagoStateUniversity,Nov.19,2013
*Refereed
FULFILLINGTHEPROMISE
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PROSPECTS FOR IGBO HUMAN RIGHTS IN

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2004 Vol. 48 No. 1

1. The Massacres of 1966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

166 [VOL. 48:165

3. The Changing Doctrine as Governmental

Igbo human rights in Nigeria became an issue of international

1. See discussion infra Part III(B)(1).

present-day Nigeria7 reputed for their egalitarianism,8 enthusiasm for

168 [VOL. 48:165

portant elements of reparations, federalism, and democracy, for the

I. HUMAN RIGHTS AND HISTORY REGARDING THE

erty, security, property and other humans rights may be denied by an

170 [VOL. 48:165

human rights part of the working foundations of contemporary

rights is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

172 [VOL. 48:165

Also, international human rights instruments, such as the ACHPR,

perienced by individual persons) the individual quality of many indi-

46. Id. at 117.

174 [VOL. 48:165

rights in human rights be read in a broader sense than mere legal

B. Guarantee of Human Rights in Nigeria

53. See An-Naim, supra note 45, at 112-13.

legitimate constitutional system. In particular, the country violates

176 [VOL. 48:165

tion has yet to be released by the government. In short, neither the

II. IGBOS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

also much scope for individual mobility,72 and political participation

178 [VOL. 48:165

groups in the country.87 Igbos number at least 30 million people and

180 [VOL. 48:165

seventy percent of Biafras population of 14 million people then,91

tenacious resistance to British colonial rule.98 Also, the first large-

182 [VOL. 48:165

called themselves Nigerian nationalists when no Nigerian nation ex-

Nigeria suffered a temporary setback in 1966 following the return to

B. Igbos As a Subject of International Law and a Legitimate

A key question is whether Igbos are subjects of international law

113. See discussion infra notes 170-71 and accompanying text.

184 [VOL. 48:165